


Cats Eat Birds

by writingtheworks



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Action, Action & Romance, BatCat isn't a thing because I'm a monster, Bruce Wayne is Batman, But not all the time, Damian Wayne is Robin, Damian Wayne is a Little Shit, F/M, Gen, Like an unhealthy amount, Next Generation, Original Character(s), Original Character-centric, Romance, Symbolism, Talia isn't a rapist because Morrison can suck dick, and I mean HELLA symbolism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-21
Updated: 2019-07-10
Packaged: 2019-07-14 23:24:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 22,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16050713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writingtheworks/pseuds/writingtheworks
Summary: Batman is aging. Aging to the point where criminals can hear him in silent buildings and he, for the first time, can be found in the shadows by the naked eye. Gotham's Rogues and The Joker, in particular, have noticed and have already begun to build plans and find predecessors. Damian Wayne has observed his father's chronic exhaustion, running so deep that Bruce has become tired with life instead of energy. Christen Young has noticed too, even as a newcomer to Gotham Academy from Central City.Damian, the dark (and unwilling) heir to the mantle of the Batman, is distracted from his future by Selina Kyle's alluring associate, the Stray. But the all-new, all-good Catwoman and Catgirl are followed closely by a shadow on the wall, someone involved in the pasts of both Catgirl and the present Robin... and not in a good way. In a whirlwind of lies, blood, and the line of good and bad blurring, Gotham's watchful protector and future dark-night must understand the most important rule he was taught; no one is ever who they truly say they are.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, readers! My name is Ivy. I've been writing fanfiction for around 3 years now (as of Feb. 2018), and all through that time I only wrote one-shot and imagine books. I'd never fully fleshed out an entire story. So when I say that I'm proud to present this book, I truly am! I've always wanted to be a writer ever since I got into this form of media. I've been reading comics even before I knew how to read, so I felt that my first big fanfiction should honor one of my big role models from comics: Robin, the boy wonder.
> 
> This book is almost entirely pre-written, all saved in one big google doc that took me a forever to write. I hope you enjoy this book even if you don't like Damian, or Selina Kyle, or Jon Kent (I frown on you if you do, though)! This started as a brief miniseries that developed into a much bigger idea, and I can't wait to see your reactions to how I explored it. Enjoy, lovelies!
> 
> Note: THIS IS THE SECOND PUBLISHED DRAFT OF THIS BOOK.

** | MAIN CAST | **

**NAOMI SCOTT as Cristen Young | Nickname: Cris | Age 17-18**

**—Fleetwood Mac; _Dreams_**

**__ **

**__ **

**__ **

**ARSALAN GHASEMI as Damian Wayne | Codename: Robin (Teen Wonder/Robin v) | Age 17-18**

**— Sia; Kendrick Lamar:** **_The Greatest_ **

**__ **

**__ **

**(I tried to find actually TEENAGERS instead of 20-30 something-year-olds who look nothing like a highschooler - Ivy)**

**LEVI MILLER as JONATHAN KENT | Codename: Superboy (Jon) | Age 15-16**

**—Khalid; _Young Dumb & Broke_**

**__ **

**__ **

 

**AMANDLA STENBERG as ROSE RIED | Nickname: Bullet | Age 17-18**

**—Queen: _You're My Best Friend_  **

****

****

**KIERNAN SHIPKA as LUCY NEWMAN | Nickname: Luce (The real Batgirl) | Age 16**

**—Crowded House; _Don't Dream It's Over_   **

****

****

**EIZA GONZÁLEZ as SELINA KYLE | Codename: Catwoman (Good Kitty) | Age 46**

**—Madonna; _Like a Virgin_**

**__ **

**__ **

**BEN AFFLECK as BRUCE WAYNE | Codename: Batman (Batdad) | Age 54**

****—AC/DC: _Highway to Hell_** **

****__ ** **

****__ ** **

___

**[CONTINUED]**

**IDRIS ELBA as REESE YOUNG | Codename: Dad**

****

 

**NOAH CENTINEO as JASON TODD | Codename: Red Hood**

****

**NADINE NJEIM as TALIA AL GHUL | Codename: Daughter of The Demon**

****


	2. PROLOGUE

**GOTHAM CITY; SOMERSET DISTRICT; PARK ROW (CRIME ALLEY) | SEVERAL YEARS AGO | CRISTEN**  

 _THERE WAS SOMETHING_ magical about rain. It was a natural way of healing, a lullaby to protect you when you had no other, and it couldn’t leave you. The thing about the rain is that it would always come back, even if it took an hour or a hundred years. Cristen hated things that couldn’t come back. Everything good that had ever happened to Cristen had happened in the rain, and everything good in Cristen’s life had left when the rain had dried up.

The only good thing that had yet to leave her was being held hostage, quivering hands gasping and tugging against the arm around her throat, eyes too young and too reckless to be full of so much fear. Cristen didn’t want to think about fear. She wanted to think about the rain.

“ _Cristen_ ,” Laureline whimpered. It was a question abandoned by inflection, asking Cristen a dozen things at once. There was a palpable note of fear that boiled in Cristen’s stomach the moment it hit her ears. She was only _eleven_. Why couldn’t the attacker see that?

She had met Laureline in the rain. She could remember the pale coldness of a windowpane against her temple, clouded over with smog. Sister Persephone’s Home for Boys & Girls was more of a doghouse than an adoption center, and Cristen, who had been there since forever, had never been inclined toward the boisterous activity that the main rooms held. All of the other kids were too loud… too _soft_.

But that could all be simple bitterness. Cristen had learned, after years and years of rejection and observation, that she was _broken_ . Something was distinctly wrong with her. Why else would she reside in Persephone's so long? Because Cristen flinched at loud noises and walked funny and broke things and was— _abnormal_. Wrong.

That was why she grew to appreciate Laureline. She entered in a cacophony, screaming up a storm, wailing and kicking all the way to the main office. Cristen’s brows had pinched at the noise. At least it had been raining that day.

How she and Laureline had gotten to where they were now was a mystery. Laureline had begun to follow Cristen, and Cristen followed the rain like she followed the questions she had about her abnormalities.

Too much of her time had been spent sobbing inside locked closets, hands clawing her ears shut, pressing herself into the floor and desperately— _desperately_ trying to make the world shut up. Why was everything so loud? So fragile? So _dangerous?_

Cristen couldn’t think of any answers right now. She could only think about the blood around her mouth, the terror in her best friend’s eyes, and, ridiculously, that it _wasn’t_ raining.

“C’mon,” said the mugger. The tattoo on his wrist said that he was from a gang in the Bowery, and she had to hold in a curse of frustration. It just had to be _them._ “I know it was you who took our shit, kid! You give us back the police radio you stole, and we give you back the girl.”

He gestured loosely with the pistol. The darkness rippled and two more figures appeared, charged with the same weapons and the same predatory smiles. Cristen’s eyes flickered to the pistols like one might look over a new challenge. They did not walk, but _strode_ onto the scene, nothing but arrogance and control. It made her gut stir. The idea that someone could be comfortable with that weapon, understand one so well that it became an extension of them...

Gotham was a horrible city. She ate away at her people, right down to the bone, then tossed the remains in the streets as an example for the others to cater to. And she made sure you knew it. She taught you every dirty little secret she had, from the blood in the alleys to the corpses in the dump. Examples.

“Let her go.” Cristen said. Thoughts of beating them raw, hurting them until they were incapable of hurting another, were ripe. Little kept her from opting for another approach.

“That’s cute, comin’ from you,” scoffed one, waving the pistol near Cristen’s face. She knew his name was Marco. “How old are you? Like, what, thirteen? Just hand it over. We know you took that radio!”

She looked at Laureline, “Run.”

The only good thing about Gotham was that she was a wonderful teacher, if you wanted to learn her best subject: violence.

You could say that Cristen was a teacher’s pet.

Cristen’s hands snapped outward, shoving the first’s gun-arm out of reach and slamming her knee into his stomach as hard as she could. Two shots rang out in quick succession beside her face. They were close enough where she could feel the ends of her hair burn, but late enough into her hit where she felt the familiar buzz at the base of her skull. Three against one? She could handle this.

But of course, she had spoken too soon. A pair of palms pinned her to the nearby dumpster, crushing her windpipe and pressing the air out of her like popped balloons. She could see the blur of people behind the spots growing in her vision. Maybe she wasn’t the teacher’s pet afterall.

Then, all at once, it was gone. She was dropped to the damp cement of the alley floor, hitting her head hard on the rim of the bin. There wasn’t much time to register anything else but the pain in her head, the white dots across her vision—then, the incoming body thrown over her head and into the trash.

Cristen hadn’t realized it, but she’d closed her eyes and shielded her face with her arms. She just hoped she hadn’t yelped or anything.

There was a beat of silence. The cool wind of the night rolled through the alley’s mouth, sweeping over her and the ground in a darkening and unforgiving fog. Then the wind spoke, voice even and condescending and almost… boyish, somehow.

“You’re stronger than I’d assumed you’d be,” said the wind, “But you made an error. Your chin is low—towards your chest—and your elbows are tucked in when blocking. An amateur's mistake.”

Cristen pulled her hands from her face, wondering why the fog was critiquing her block. Maybe she’d been hit too hard. “Um… thank you?”

 _Tsk._ The wind clicked it’s tongue. Which made zero sense, because the wind shouldn’t have a tongue.

Maybe that was because the wind… wasn’t the wind. It looked more like a _shadow._ But when her vision cleared, she saw that it was actually a little boy (or at least he… _looked_ like a little boy, almost vampiric half wrapped up in darkness like that), easily Cristen’s age or younger. He had a boot on the thug that had manhandled Laureline, harshly binding his wrists with some kind of wire.

He wasn’t the wind, but it was easier calling him that than _Robin_. There was no way in hell that Robin could be here. But the wind was always there, even when the rain wasn’t.

He was the new one. It was hard not to notice the transition from gangly, broad-shouldered, bow-staff wielding supposed strategist of the Young Justice team, to— _this_ . Cristen hadn’t met the Robin before this one… but present-Robin was… _short_ , and she could see the tip of a sword sheath under his cape as he approached.

Different. Abnormal.

“Well?” He said, expectant, and she realized that he was holding out a hand to help her stand.

“Sorry,” Cristen rushed. Her thoughts had molded into a thick sludge that she didn’t feel like stepping through, but they seemed to be summarized pretty well when he pulled her up. “Um, wow. You’re… Robin.”

“I’m aware.” He said, an odd combination of haughty and… proud? Pleased?

Cristen wavered on her feet, and placed a hand on the wall to steady herself. (Russell had been tossed haphazardly into the bin, and she had completely forgotten if that had been her or not). She looked at him a lot like she’d look at a unicorn. Or a gargoyle come to life after falling in the radioactive Gotham River. Whatever the myth of the week was.

“Shit.” It was an odd word coming from someone so young. Cristen felt the pain unfolding, her tough skin fighting against the incoming bruises. But that didn’t matter right now. “Did you see where Laureline went?”

Robin studied her, almost as if he was about to ask her if she was alright, but turned his head away instead. “North. Meriwether street—didn’t you see all the trash she turned up in her wake?”

Cristen felt her bones relax into her muscles. That was where home was—good, she’d know to wait for her, then. In this neighborhood… calling the police just wasn’t an option.

What did you _say_ in this situation?

She’d heard the stories. There was a feeling in the back of her mind that the bats usually didn’t linger around the crime scene, and yet, here Robin was, chilling around like a rich gangster—well, maybe that was an exaggeration. All he really seemed to be doing was looking up at the sky, more silent than stone, waiting for something. (The boot on the thug didn’t really add to the effect, though).

“Um, thank you,” Cristen said. She tried not to think about how pathetic she looked, or how he probably had better places to be, “I’m… usually a lot better at this. He caught me off gaurd. I can handle myself. Are you—?”

“Fine,” Robin said, whirling around. “Obviously.”

He stuck her with such a piercing gaze that she was half-surprised his mask didn’t burn up. Cristen tried not to shrink under the attention—he seemed like a kid from money with how talked, and Cristen was the exact opposite. She was just a homeless, just a kid, and he was… _Robin_ . He’d saved the world more times than she could even _think_ to count.

It startled her to believe it, but Robin was nearly everything Cristen wanted to be.

He scoffed a little. It felt like it was his version of a laugh, though. “And you are most certainly not.”

“Oh, shaddup. I could totally kick your ass.” She laughed a bit, the sound punched out of her in a single voice-warbling note. “You just got lucky, not to mention the fancy belt.”

Robin stared at her for a long moment, trying to determine if she was serious or not. He only raised an eyebrow at her (or part of his mask had lifted like he did). She mentally checked that off: _doesn’t get jokes very well_.

“You’re kidding.” Robin said, flatly.

They stared at each other for another long breath.

Cristen was born in Gotham, so she knew what everyone in Gotham knew; the Batman and his companions were myths, and if they _were_ real, they weren’t human. Even the police would report the same things. _Claws as long as my arm. Bulletproof. Wingspan like a bus._ The only reason Cristen has registered him as Robin at all was the circle on his breast, gleaming under the light like real gold. The jagged cut of an _R_ winked up at her under the moonlight.

But he was… here. He didn’t have claws (a pretty big sword, maybe), he didn’t look bulletproof, and he definitely didn’t have wings. He was just… a kid. Maybe not a normal kid, but Cristen wasn’t a normal kid either. The realization that Robin was like her hit her calmly, like a secret she had already really known.

Thus, she grinned at him, all teeth and completely out of her mind. “You heard me. I could kick your ass.”

It was a little tentative, like he didn’t do it much. Just a quirk of his lip. But after considering something… Robin smiled too. “Care to test that theory?”  


_SHE’D DRAGGED HIM_ down the corner of Meriwether and Cooke, down the street to the corner of Somerset Island and to the roof against the docks of Morrison Harbor. They reached her favorite sitting spot with the help of Robin’s grappling wire. Cristen could hear the late-night cars whizzing by on Madison Bridge if they went quiet, which was pretty easy with how little Robin spoke.

And when he did, it was nothing but smack.

“I still don’t understand your excitement,” Robin said, blandly. “I could beat you with both my hands tied behind my back and my eyes closed. You’re simply begging to be bested.”

She jumped a little bit at his voice. He wasn’t very keen to hide the smug flick of his lip that followed, but was kind enough not to comment. When she said that she’d _dragged_ him down the street, that’d been an exaggeration; she quickly discovered that he didn’t like being out in the open, and had followed her the whole way over in the shadows.

“I thought that… you could teach me some things. And what _ever_ ,” she’d laughed, which rang a little bit louder than it usually did in the slums. “You’re gonna be needing those hands to patch up when I kick your sorry behind.”

Robin did that little scoff again. He shifted his stance, pushing his cape behind his elbows, apparently ready to teach. “ _Tsk_.”

Cristen ignored him in favor of being taught. The second the overzealous _hit me_ left her mouth, Robin punched her so hard her teeth rattled.

Cristen recoiled, but now that she had more of a chance to get into the zone, she threw one back at him. Maybe it was a little harder than she should have. He must have let it hit him out of pity or something, but whatever it was made her a bit mad, so she tried again and was blocked this time. It grew childish quickly, which went from slapping hands to a headlock just as fast.

Robin didn’t really understand why she was laughing. He set her loose, only to watch a smile blossom on her face. The confusion that registered on his was granted with an explanation.

“Sorry. Laureline and I play-fight all the time, and I guess I’m just used to that,” Cristen reached up to touch her jaw, missing Robin’s furrowed brows at the term _playfight_. “You got a mean hit though. Anything to critique about me?”

There must have been a lot of logical things he could say, but he only smiled at her, all canines. “You hit like a girl.”

“And how is that a bad thing?” Cristen frowned, an eyebrow firing.

Maybe it was just a trick of the light, but Robin’s ears seemed to pinken. “...It’s not. I never said it was.”

“Good,” Cristen turned her head, still a little at a loss for words.

The more she thought about it, the more she stepped away from the scene… Cristen and Robin just play fought on a roof (above her favorite view, no less). She was about to initiate _small talk_ . With _Robin_ . But she ended up saying _‘um’_ at the same time as he went _‘hh’_ , so she politely nodded for him to go first. She wanted him to stay, but it was beginning to become clear that he was in a hurry to leave.

“Your balance is off and you focus more on your opponent than on yourself—your own footing, hand placement, etcetera. You seem to rely heavily on your strength and speed, which are formidable, but you need to put your focus to your attack style and momentum,” Robin babled, waving his hand in a knowledgeable and dismissive way. “You would need _much_ more training if you were to even _consider_ surpassing me. If such a thing is possible.”

“Oh? So I’m _formidable_ now, huh?” Cristen chuckled. The expression swiftly dropped, pinkenned, and she shyly rubbed her the back of her neck. “But would you mind… uh, showing me? I don’t think I really get it.”

Robin ran her through it. After feebly punching his hand and pretty much klutzing her way through things, Cristen hit in a manner that he was pleased with and blocked on time. She remembers this moment with something akin to delight.

“Uh? And that was…?”

“Work on it,” was all Robin said, but she laughed anyway. He turned his head away when she did.

“Um,” Cristen repeated, pulling her hand toward her chest, “Do you know the best places to hit people? To… um… defend yourself.”

“Aim for the head, throat, or center of the chest.”

Robin said more stuff after that, which was great and all, but Cristen lost any semblance of track when he reached out and took her hand. She felt more than watched as he folded it into a fist and pressed her first two knuckles further forward. From then on, Cristen was uncertain if she even possessed limbs at all—there remained only Robin’s, which were rubbery and warm with the material of his gloves.

“...it will allow you to aim more specifically. If you are hitting someone with the flat of your fingers, you’re more likely to hurt yourself,” he explained. “Anything more?”

Cristen flushed. “Huh?”

Robin frowned at her, an instant stomach-dropper, and examined her face. After a beat of silence, he moved from her fist to her pulse. It was rapid enough to drum in her ears. “Are you in shock?”

“Shock?” Choked Cristen.

“Yes,” Robin rolled his eyes (mask?), “If you recall, I saved you from being beaten to death in an alleyway moments ago. I understand you may not share the same education as myself—”

Cristen ripped her hand from his and cursed at him. “I’m fine! And I have all the education I _need_.”

He pressed his lips together.

The decline of the conversation was obvious. He was probably going to tell her to go home soon, or call the police or something. He was in a hurry to exit anyways, and Cristen worried it was because of something she said. Robin kept looking south, across the water and at the Old Gotham Island, up above the sky—and then it clicked. Looking up at the sky. All the waiting. The Bats.

“Sorry. Uh, what exactly do you do,” Cristen awkwardly nodded at the sky, around the direction she knew the GCPD building was, “when, uh, the signal…?”

It wasn’t the Diamond District or Uptown, but there were still a lot of skyscrapers cluttered around that part of the city. Cristen could see the big neon _W_ on the Wayne Enterprises building.

“That’s confidential.” Robin threw it into the conversation casually, but there was a note of mock-seriousness, like someone mimicking an FBI agent. That made Cristen smile for some reason. He seemed silently pleased when she did, and let out another little scoff-laugh.

“My turn,” Robin said. He crouched at the edge of the building—like Spider-Man, Cristen’s nerd-brain noted—and waited until she followed him before he spoke again. “Why were you fighting three armed men two times your size over a _police communicator?_ ”

He flashed the little radio in her direction, having turned it on to listen to the broken crackle of voices on the line as a white noise of their conversation. Cristen slouched forward, lifting a knee to put her chin on top of it and closing her eyes at the familiar sound. He must have taken it off one of the gangsters.

“I, uh. The boys. They’re from one of the bigger Bowery garage gangs. Stole that radio off of me a couple weeks ago, so I stole it back,” Cristen explained, voice hard. She turned her eyes to the city, having the sudden fear that he’d turn her in. But it would feel wrong, and be wrong, to lie to him anyway.

“I know. I’ve been tracking them.” Robin said. He stared at her face, even when she didn’t turn to look at him in return. “But why the communicator? It looks like it’s been broken and repaired with _duct tape_. Not exactly valuable.”

“No—it’s my turn next, only fair. You got to ask _your_ question,” Cristen deflected. She offered him the barest of smiles, which he noted were more _real_ than before. “Why do you hang around Crime Alley so much? I hear the stories, and you’re apparently around here—”

“Park Row,” was his only response.

She raised her brows. “Park Row?”

“That’s it’s name. Call it by it’s name,” he said, suddenly more strict than before.

She rarely heard people call the Crime Alley neighborhood by its original title. Everyone started calling it that after the Wayne murders, but she could see why judging the street on it’s history instead of the people was harsh. It seemed… personal to him, somehow, though. He softened up in the next beat, but only enough for his shoulders to loosen a thread and his chin to raise an inch.

“And this… is my patrol zone. Now, the communicator.”

Cristen’s voice was small. “I like… I like listening in. Jump in… sometimes. The cops can’t do the things that I can do. And I fixed the radio, y’know, because it was broken.”

Robin said nothing, and that was easily worse than if he’d spoken in judgement. She felt prompted to continue, and the words fell from her mouth like water from a broken dam.

“I know it’s… insane. Well, maybe not for you, but—yeah. I like helping out in anyway I can,” Cristen paused to looked down at her hands. “I want—no, _need_ to help.”

Robin suddenly stopped. She watched him draw his cape across himself, expression grim, and turn his face skyward. “You… have potential. But this life _isn’t_ for everyone. Especially kids.”

“I’m _not_ a kid,” Cristen huffed. “And neither are you. The only difference is that you’re Robin and I’m sleeping on dirt.”

“You think I didn’t sleep on dirt to get here?” said Robin, who crossed the roof to crouch on her other side. “I climbed mountains. _Moved_ them. I did _everything_ to become what I am, to learn what I know. It’s not the dirt stopping you—it’s the _belief_ that it is.”

The childish blanks in her mind filled the gaps in his image; the cape began to flow across his back, fluttering like leaves in autumn wind, expression cast in the shadow of the oncoming storm. It was something out of a movie. Those big movies, with the hero at the heart of the battle fighting for what they believed in.

Sometimes, Cristen imagined herself to be the man on the poster. Protecting those that he loved, but he loved everyone, and thus he saved everyone. That was what a hero was. Who treasured humanity for their capability and starve to protect it. To encase the beauty of a child, forever happy, in a still moment. To protect that moment so that others could share the love held in that child’s expression, her laugh as she told Cristen a bad joke.

To forbid the fear in her eyes to ever reveal itself.

“So you’re saying that I have a chance.” Cristen began, speaking slow and low as if not to disturb the moment. “I’m sorry to say, Robin, but you don’t know what it’s like out here. I’ve seen so many people die… lose hope…”

“I _don’t know?_ ” Robin scoffed. “Of _course_ I know. Who do you think has been stopping those deaths? Restoring that hope?”

Cristen glanced aside. “Yeah. You.”

It was a funny thing. Robin opened his mouth to speak again, to proclaim in a voice that seemed to be permanently in italics to contrast Cristen’s boldness. But he stopped, and the words pulled back too. Unwinding into simple text.

“Not just me,” Robin said, and returned her gaze. His attention sparked something in her chest and seemed to unfurl it. “The clinic down the street will welcome anyone in need. That police officer always walks that older man home. And you, protecting the children of this neighborhood.”

Her eyes widened; and in their reflection, Robin unclasped the little metal R from his armor. Her lips parted, stricken. “You don’t even know my name.”

The cool, golden R was pressed into her hand by his gauntlet. Their fingers skidded off each other for a moment as she tried to offer it back to him—she couldn’t take this—but he won out in the end, closing her fingers around symbol in a locking sort of way.

“You don’t know mine, either,” said Robin. “There are always good people. Sometimes they are fortunate, but give their life for their city while inspired by a bat. Sometimes they’re nameless. And sometimes, with the same inspiration, they are foolish girls stealing police communicators in the rundown part of town. Do you understand?”

When it seemed that she did not, staring at him with the wide eyes of process, Robin firmly tells her: “Stop blaming the world for where you are, what it has given you. Stop running away from all that you fear—and instead run in the right direction... toward what you believe in.”

Without thinking about it, fueled only by a sudden rush of comprehension and adoration thrown onto her like coal into a furnace, Cristen threw herself at him. Robin didn’t argue. Cristen was met with unsure palms upon her back and the cool smell of kevlar, his cape a grapple bound between her fingers. Few people had ever told her she’d mattered. Fewer had ever given her the chance to show them.

“ _Um_ ,” choked Robin.

“Thank you,” Cristen said, working her way past the barbed wire at her throat, “Thank you _so much_.”

Cristen hadn’t ever thought she was going to be worthwhile. But suddenly she and Robin had pulled apart and were simply staring at each other, red-faced and sincere, and she felt a madness take over—her life sprawled before her in a butterfly of patterns and chances and choices, and the steps she would take to get her there.

For now, the kids on the block were Cristen’s responsibility. Next would come the neighborhood. Then the other boroughs. One island. Another. Then the whole city would be hers, the whole _world_ , and Cristen would be content with the vision she had and could watch Laureline blossom in a new Gotham. Cristen would make it her duty to protect anyone who needed it—just as Robin did, and as Laureline needed.

His form subsided into ink as he stepped back into the shadows, their eyes still met and their lives no longer parallel lines, but an angle to meet at one point. Cristen wondered where that point would be.

“It was nice meeting you,” she murmured, and laughed at how unconventional that suddenly seemed. “Maybe the police don’t always think so, but you’re my hero. You always have been.”

Robin’s face grew hot, and a grin sprawled from one cheek to the other. “You have exquisite taste.”

“But I assure you,” Robin said, stepping toward the ledge, his cape licking the drop at his heels, “it won’t be the last time. We’ll meet again—” he smiled beneath his hood, “—and I cannot wait for that utterly insufferable day.”

With a single step backward, Robin was flying. Cristen watched him launch across the street and swing in a great plume of yellow and red across the sky, wingspan as wide as a leap toward the moon would take.

When she looked up, Robin was gone... And it had begun to rain.  


_CRISTEN ARRIVED AT THE_ _FRONT_ door of her ratty, run-down apartment that she shared with the Jefferson boys and that Moxie girl from Little Italy. Laureline met her at the door like thunder, and the following worrying embrace was lightning on Cristen’s cold skin. She’d been crying; Cristen’s fingers met a hot tear on her cheek and kissed it away.

The first thing out of her mouth came when Cristen hugged her back, sighing in relief, was, “We’re _neva_ goin’ to Crime Alley again.”

“Park Row,” Cristen corrected, gently and without thinking about it.

Laureline shot her an odd look, “ _Park Row?_ ”

“That’s its name,” Cristen said, pulling the door shut. She felt Robin’s _R_ slip up from her pocket and pushed it back into place without seam, glowing and grinning like a freak. “Call it by it’s name.”


	3. ACT 1

  Gotham has been famous for her bats long before the vigilante Batman came to be recognized in the public eye, but his appearance and popularity drew attention to the ironic fact that Gotham City, New Jersey, has been vastly populated by colonies of bats millennia before it was founded in the 1600s. 

          In 1609, the Dutch East India Company selected English explorer Henry Hudson to chart an easterly passage to Asia. Along his journey, he surveyed the Northeastern coastal region of what would one day become the United States. Following Hudson's course, Dutch pioneers sailed for this New World and began populating the region once inhabited by the Miagani. The pioneers established themselves in two different colonies. One colony was set up along the shore where fishing was plentiful, and the other was developed further inland for the sake of mining in the plentiful caves of the Gotham countryside—where our little flying friends are introduced.

        The most common among these groups of bats is the American Brown Bat (Myotis lucifugus), which can often be seen rising over the harbor at dusk, out hunting due to their carnivorous nature. But do not be afraid! These bats (and others populating Gotham's hills) rarely harm city-goers, though are known to be quite brave and swoop down to steal food or nest in your roof.

They are a model organism for the study of bats! They have been known to be capable of pack-bonding with nearly everything. Older bats have been documented 'adopting' orphaned or abandoned pups in their colony, and in domesticated terms, are friendly with other house pets like dogs, but in particular,  _cats_...

_

This part of Cristen's life is called: ' _copying._ '


	4. act 1, chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “But I assure you,” Robin said, stepping toward the ledge, his cape licking the drop at his heels, “it won’t be the last time. We’ll meet again—” he smiled beneath his hood, “—and I can’t wait for that utterly insufferable day.”

**AN INSUFFERABLE DAY**

 

**GOTHAM CITY; NEW GOTHAM; GOTHAM ACADEMY FOR THE GIFTED | 6:27 PM | NOW**

_MAYBE IT’S A_  Cristen cliche, but she can’t help but look out the window and silently clasp her hands in a prayer for rain. Fall is a season for drizzling, too, and the streets swirl with leaves like gossamer skirts and the sky swells with the promise of a storm. Without it, she knows she’ll die. But this isn’t exactly the first time Cristen has faced death before.

Well, okay. Maybe a meeting with the headmaster for Cristen’s final year of high school isn’t exactly death, but it’s definitely an unoriginal way to start. We’ve all read that story; girl starts at new school, girl meets mysterious boy, girl falls in love, girl faces circumstance that makes the male lead suffer. Cristen is not that girl. She’s got other things on her mind, present company included.

(Also, excuse you, her love interest would at least be a bit more respectable.)

The man to her left: his posture is tight. Fingers are folded. Gaze is strong and proud, like an unyielding grandfather clock. It’s an image Cristen has seen a million times, because Reese Young will always be the soldier he once was, and the confidence he has when talking to the headmaster is given. Maybe it’s an adopted-father thing, but Reese has always been better at working people than her.

Headmaster Hammer. She’s been pushing down a scowl the entire conversation, but that’s nobody’s fault but his. (Cristen was raised to  _respect_ authority, but also to know who deserved it). The buzzing sensation in her chest tells all; he’s a threat, but to his luck, not an extreme one. Cristen would know. She always knows.

“Ah, yes. Ms. Young,” says Hammer, and his glasses are so far down his nose that another heavy sigh could blow them right off. He tends to do a lot of heavy sighing. “And you must be Captain Reese. You’ve been Cristen’s guardian since sometime around 2011, correct?”

He tries to deliver it without care, but it bleeds through anyway. Hammer’s the headmaster of a private school. He reads that one of the kids he’s going to be teaching is from the slums, and his lip curls.

Cristen’s fingers bunch in a similar gesture of distaste. Reese covers them, reassuring and defensive.

“That is true. Though, I’d appreciate it if you read her entire file before forming an opinion on my daughter, Headmaster,” Reese says, icily. He seems a little more stern than usual.

If Cristen could, she’d hug him hard enough to crack a rib or two. Funny thing is that Cristen actually could. It’s a thought that stabs her in the side—half of that file is forged, all to cover up the pretty little secret that is Cristen’s heritage. Reese’s stiffness suddenly makes sense; they could be found out today. They’d kept her name off of the National Metahuman Charter with plenty of costs, lying being only one of the minor ones.

“Hn.” Hammer stares Reese down, but like a lion recognizing the stronger alpha, he bows his head and turns the page of her notes. Cristen counts the lies as he reads.

“Immediately after your adoption, you were transferred to Wisconsin in order to pursue a martial arts program. You were accepted in with a recommendation from a GCP sergeant, graduated top of your class after only a year, then continued in private lessons while attending a Fawcett City public school.”

He seems to have made an assessment already, lips tight and yet… almost keen. There is a word that he won’t say. Hammer trades it for more garbage. “At your high school, you quickly tested into a distinct category of advanced classes and excelled in them—forensic science: interesting—various technological and engineering classes… and AP physics.”

Only two? Huh, so Reese does practice what he preaches. And  _the best lies always have some elements of truth_  was the man’s  _bible_.

The first lie wasn’t exactly untrue. Cristen had lived in Fawcett City, but she’d spent half of that time in South America and a month in Asia. The other came in the form of the private lessons. Her teacher was both a criminal and unlicensed. It’s not like Cristen’s heritage was enough to put her under a microscope, the universe just had to slap on the law-breaking, too.

He flipped the page. “Plenty of after-school activities.”

_“Aren’t you s’posed to be in school, little—?” Jesper Ozenfield, a local drug source, snarled at her._

_She kicked him in the chest, sending him careening into a crate with enough force to splinter the wood. If she was any other person, anyone else at all, it would be considered a hard hit. But Cristen was just getting started. The dealer agreed; he started shouting out promises, promises to stop selling to kids, promises to turn himself in._

_Cristen smiled, and wheeled back her fist, “Let’s just call this a service hour.”_

“Hm,” Hammer pushed his glasses up his nose. “Plenty of martial arts and engineering awards.”

_Her boots skid against the gravel, but Cristen didn’t let the other girl take advantage of her surprise. Cristen rolled back over a car and launched off the metal, tearing into the air like a bullet, her knuckles almost steaming. The girl blocked it with a piece of scrap. Regardless, Cristen had dented it clear-through and sent her spiraling into the soil._

_“Don’t you know what gang I’m from?” She panted, growling. The stun gun in her hands was filthy. “I’m loyal to the Coventry Tigers! The best fighters in Gotham!”_

_Cristen said nothing for a long beat, leaping over the back of the car and divulging in a makeshift taser crafted from an old phone. She wasn’t smiling when she spoke, “No wonder they call this place a junkyard.”_

_She hadn’t liked that. That special entity in Cristen’s chest jumped to attention. Before the Tiger could even get off her feet, her legs had dropped out from underneath her, stun-gun sent spiralling by her opponents stronger gadget. Cristen knocked out her lights with a punch hard enough to rattle her teeth._

“You’re quite the character, Ms. Young, though I’m afraid that I must address the most personal part of your history,” Hammerhead said. He leaned forward and clasped his hands across the desk, and Cristen felt the sunlight drain out of the room.

Reese sat up a little straighter, and Hammerhead gave a frank sigh. “I understand that Cristen has undergone various traumas in her lifetime. It reads here that she has had alternate forms of counselling and therapy in the past because of these… events.”

She took a very sudden interest in the wind whispering through the window.

The harbor. The wail. The scream, barely halfway out of her throat by the time the gunshot goes off. Her body falls, the water opening up and swallowing her whole, without grace or even hope of serenity. Cristen dives. She’s blinded by the ice and the water and what she later realizes is blood. Darkness. Then the blue, red and white lights blur by, and a hand is on her shoulder, whispering promises that no one can keep anymore.

Laureline.

Cristen had only realized that Reese was rubbing her shoulder when he spoke, “Yes. But this is Gotham. Everyone’s seen something. I have a feeling that Cristen won’t want special treatment; she’s had enough as it is. We like to keep those matters outside of her education.”

This is Gotham. That phrase has a plethora of definitions, something more than a surplus. It makes her fists curl. What’s worse is that Reese is right. Everyone has seen something in this city that burns behind their eyelids at night, where the spots dance in their vision like the frantic pop of a distant bullet. If Cristen could wish for anything, anything at all—from Reese’s good health to meeting Wonder Woman—it would be to let at least Gotham go a night without a gun being fired.

That wish had come before Robin. But she’d never really believed… that she was capable of being the hero, even if the power and the responsibility was there. It had been him who had shown her that Cristen could be worth it if she just tried hard enough.

Hard enough to be like him.

“You’re correct—our school district handles many cases similar to Cristen’s own,” Hammer nodded. He rolled out the nearest drawer and pulled another manilla from it, offering it to Reese. “But I would still feel more comfortable if Cristen and yourself met our school councillors…”

Her arm is rubbed again. She looks at Reese, finding a supportive recognition there. He’d always been real good at that: sniffing out her anxiety a lot like she sniffed out bad-guys. “Baby, why don’t you go outside and explore the grounds? Take your schedule and find what rooms your classes are in. I’ll take care of things down here.”

“M’ not a baby,” she muttered, but was smiling.

Reese chuckled dryly. “Uh- _huh_.”

The conversation had reached it’s cusp, and Cristen furled back in on herself as she left, closing the door to the office behind her and taking in a not-so-fresh inhale.  _This was Gotham_ , he says. It burns the back of her mouth like a breath of smoke. Reese and Hammer’s voices fade under the mist of her thoughts.

Why was the poverty rates in the bad neighborhoods—The Bowery, The Narrows, Park Row—spiking in the last few years?  _This is Gotham_ , say the drug-dealers and the thieves,  _things are always getting worse_.

How come everyone from a crime lord to a petty thief were walking out of court free?  _This is Gotham_ , says the jury,  _the gangsters own this city._

What had caused the wash of kidnappings in the last months, with the wind sweeping up the homeless kids? More importantly, why wasn’t this case getting the attention it deserved?  _This is Gotham_ , says the news,  _things like this just happen here._

Well, not in her Gotham, was what Cristen said. She’d been out of town for the sake of her training, but she was back for a reason: all of the learning she could do elsewhere was over. The only thing left for her to do was return to her oldest teacher, and the city hadn’t exactly missed her, as much as Cristen had wanted her to.

This was  _her_ city, and she was going to save—

Here’s the funny thing about Cristen’s abilities. She’s always seen herself as a Captain America, but the truth was that her biology seemed to like Spider-Man more. Maybe it just liked to protect her. Maybe, because it was apart of her, it wanted to help her protect other people—that was Cristen’s driving force. Whatever it may be, the tingle behind her ribs has never been wrong: danger is afoot.

Spider-Sense isn’t the appropriate term, as accurate as it is. She’s always liked  _insight_ more.

Her foot swings around and hooks under two sets of legs like the snap of a viper’s tail. Earthy eyes descend upon the attackers in seconds, and melt into chocolate. Cristen winces, “Ah, shit.”

Rose Reid is on her feet first, because, of course she is. Saying that she shoots up like a bullet is too appropriate, considering the Flash shirt she’s sporting and the bounce of her oakwood curls. And—most obviously—her nickname.

“Bullet,” Cristen breathes, relaxing.

Rose—or Bullet, as Cristen has known her since her first year at Fawcett City Junior Highschool, flashes a giddy smile, “Well, why are you just standing there? Hug me, you total statue!”

And Cristen does, and it’s like she’s fourteen again and pulling stupid shit that Bullet was always dragging her out of, and they’re together again and it’s blissful. The anxiety is ripped off her shoulders with no regret. There are the obvious differences; Bullet’s a whole head taller than her now, and her copper cheeks are slimmer, but she’s still the best friend Cristen has had since she moved.

Of course, she’s not Cristen’s only best friend (a surprising feat). Lucy Newman stands back with her hands clasped, shoulders pulled together all giddy like—she can barely get out a squeaky  _hello_ before Cristen’s tossed her over her shoulder.

“You’ve gotten stronger,” Bullet notes, crossing her arms and surveying the act with something akin to pride.

Lucy looks over her shoulder at the two of them, grinning sheepishly, “Do I weigh anything to you?”

Cristen shrugs, and a slow smile rises against her skin. “It’s like holding a couple of grapes.”

They silence. Then, all at once like the roar of an incoming windy storm, they burst into laughter and skitter down the hall, a group of best friends walking off into the sunset at the end of a bad 80’s movie.

 

 _BY THE TIME_ Cristen sets Lucy down, they’ve reached the football field. The grass is faux and Cristen doesn’t like the way it scuffs against her shoes. She figures that she probably won’t be here often with how she clings to her… extra curriculars, and pauses to admire the beauty while she can, standing in the icy mist of a normal Gotham evening.

Gotham Academy is renowned for its prominent sports programs. Half of them are funded by Bruce Wayne, the guy who owns the Gotham Knights and the Gotham Gargoyles, so the field speaks for itself… Or maybe it’s more of a shout. It makes the sky bigger, more open and welcoming, bordered by giant bleachers and folded against the arts building. There’s a notable difference between it and the track (funded by LexCorp), as if pointedly declaring how much more regal it is.

Practice is still running, so Bullet jogs over to her coach—Coach Brownstone, who greets her with wide arms and a wider smile—and they get a volleyball out of the storage room and start playing off to the side. The normality and nostalgia of it hits Cristen a little too hard.

(Fondly, she remembers being hit in the face with a dodgeball. Lucy rushing over to apologize, noting that Cristen was faking pain, and offered to sit together at lunch—where she proceeded to make Cristen laugh so hard she spat spaghetti all over Bullet… Whom she’d first met the hour earlier, when Cristen had said ‘shit’ on the swings and Bullet corrected her, “No, you’re supposed to say  _schmit_.”)

“I’m sorry I didn’t visit you more often,” Cristen says, slouching.

“S’fine!” Lucy bumps the ball to Bullet, and the upturn of her Gotham accent is relieving. Cristen had been constantly made fun of for hers. “You were busy with your stuff. We all were.”

That doesn’t seem like a proper excuse. In truth, she’d been so wrapped up in her long-term plan that she’d barely thought of either of them. Her return to Gotham held an excitement exclusive to those activities, and suddenly the guilt was wrapping around her throat, throttling her. She sees an alley and a cape behind her eyes and beckons it toward her.

 _You need absolute dedication_ , Robin had said, and she hadn’t strayed from that.

Cristen remembers Gotham’s constantly-cloudy sky like bubbling lead, beams of light expanding from the depths of skyscrapers and towers to graze the sky with its fingertips. She can see in the distance the signal—the only light in this darkness, a golden circle of energy and power rippling as the clouds move forward.

Reese knew about Robin. Never everything, every detail, as this was Cristen they were talking about—but he had heroes when he was a kid, too.

He’d caught her on the roof of the building the night they arrived. It took only a look and he was ordering Chinese food and tucking her under his chin, not even complaining about the little sleep they were going to get. He just watched with her. Reese was like that—just always seemed to know.

He had fallen asleep, but the sentiment that he stayed up with Cristen without her asking made her feel a little better about it. It made her feel loved.

The Batsignal had been her friend before Bullet, before Lucy, before even Laureline. She felt like a little girl again, rolling over a stiff mattress late at night and staring up into the sky, counting until the nightmares were gone, counting until it would shut off. It was beautiful. Her own special escape, like a particular song that calms you down when sung. Cristen had learned everything she could about that beacon because of it; she could sleep best with it cast against the sky.

It wasn’t Batman and Robin’s signal anymore, it was  _hers_ , and it would be hers even after it was destroyed and the heroes were gone.

“Cristen Young,” Bullet said, stern, and set the ball over to Cristen. “Don’t you dare start ominously brooding over there. I get that you’re back in the angst capital of the world, which is definitely your town, but we’re back. It’s time to spill instead of deal.”

Her frown deepened when Cristen caught the volleyball. She didn’t like the look on Bullet’s face, she never would when it was that scowl, but she had realized a long time ago that the mission was going to become a priority. That face was going to get familiar.

Lucy tucked a string of blonde hair behind her ear, and leaned in as if exposing something big, “We know why you’re back, Cristen.”

Cristen bristled. She hadn’t even revealed much to Reese, so how would they know? Did he tell them? Even so, how would you explain that?  _Hello, yes, this is Captain Reese Young, Cristen has finally reached Selina Kyle’s impossible standards and is going to start crime-fighting—_

“It’s been almost five years since Laureline died,” Bullet blurted, cutting her hand through the air in something that clearly read  _straight to the point_. “You feel like you’ve finally healed over. But that’s a big scab and this whole city is like some skinny jeans, rubbing up against that wound until it cracks.”

Lucy elbowed her in a not-so-subtle way, and rested one gangly hand on Cristen’s elbow in a silent show of support. “What Bullet it is trying to say is that we think that you should wait a little longer. Laureline was very important to you, and coming back here, to the old places and seeing the old people… it’s not always healthy—”

“This isn’t about Laureline, I swear,” Cristen said. She swallowed hard.

“Cristen—” The two of them began, same tone and same gesture, but Cristen just shook her head.

They were right. They were always right when it came to knowing her, but not always in the correct sense. This was about Laureline. As long as Cristen was fighting this fight it would be about Laureline, and the harbor, and— _my fault my fault my fault…_

Okay. No. Maybe this wasn’t about Laureline, but she was certainly the driving force. She never wanted what happened to her to happen ever again. To anyone.

(It was funny. Cristen would say that, hear Robin’s voice instead of her own, and it made her wonder who he had lost or what mistake he had made that turned him into that boy.)

“I’m serious,” Cristen said. She dropped the ball and dug her hand into her back pocket, where her lucky charm was, where it always was, and shoved the legacy into view, “I made a choice, a long time ago, and it’s time to act upon that choice. Reese finally gave and my training is done—we came back to Gotham so I could enter the field.”

Lucy and Bullet’s faces were gold in the reflection of Robin’s rusted R, sloped with the trench she’d dug in it after rubbing it for luck after so long. The talisman was hidden as quick as it came.

Arms wrap around her for the second time, and Lucy digs her nose into Cristen’s shoulder and bunches her hands in her jacket. She breathes. “Okay.”

Bullet said nothing, which was almost more unnerving than the sudden spike of anxiety in Cristen’s chest.  _Shit. Insight’s going nuts._

Well, it would have been even more unnerving, but the stupid danger-insight-power-thing had totally just saved her from an argument that wouldn’t change her mind. Arguing with Bullet would basically be like shooting each other in the foot. It would be useless and would only hurt, so Bullet quickly backed out. Cristen hoped she would do it faster; her senses were mounting like an avalanche and an earthquake in a break-dancing competition.

Public Service Announcement: superpowers suck.

She broke door knobs with her strength when she wasn’t focusing, her ears were constantly bombarded with sound… but her sixth-sense was the worst in total. It activated when something dangerous was going on nearby—nearby being a whole goddamn city—and did so very painfully. Even a stapler could trigger it, but something small like that didn’t hurt too much.

The more pain she felt the more dangerous something was… and sometimes these powers made it feel like the whole world was a time bomb.

“We’ll see you on Wednesday, okay?” She said, peeling Cristen’s hand off of Lucy’s back.

She’d expected Bullet to drop it. Of course, they were still best friends who hadn’t spoken in person for months, so she gave her hand a firm squeeze and nodded to Lucy, “C’mon. I gotta run some errands, and I’m your ride home.”

Cristen didn’t want to make things any more tense, so she gave nothing but a wave to them as Bullet started to drag Lucy off. The moment they turned around the bleachers and into the main square Cristen did what she did best; faced the danger alone, like a dumbass.

Anxiety and insight are too similar sometimes, but there’s just something that lights in her senses that let her know. Just a subtle inclination. A tilt of the head, an extra skip in her heart, the most minute twitch of muscle and—it’s too complicated to put into human words, but it’s easiest to compare it to little exclamations jumping around her head. Annoying and disruptive.

Cristen perks up and lets her eyes fall to the opposite side of the field. That same force of righteousness conquers her and she sighs, hands fisting and pulse leveling and focus honed. That feeling and those goosebumps were a call for danger. One part of her childhood she couldn’t escape.

Her gaze swivels and flickers from person to person on the other side of the field, clearing up from practice. Her abilities allow her to know when the danger is coming, but never how to react to this danger, and that was certainly what had taken the longest to fine-tune. Picking apart targets in order to separate victims was harder than it sounded…

And there he is. The odd part is that her insight shuts off the moment she sees him, snapping closed, wires curling under flame and collapsing in on one another. That’s not normal. Abnormal.

He’s casual. Leaning against the side of the bleachers, almost hidden underneath them with his arms crossed. Something about him is pure and unaltered danger, curling off of his figure like sunlight against the moon, bleeding into the world and fogging it up like rain on a hot car. A more powerful something labelled him familiar.

She blinks. He’s still there, but this time he’s staring directly at her and… almost smugly so. With this glower, he pushes off the supporting beam, turns on his heel and disappears beneath the bleachers like a ghost. A picky ghost.

The world drew back in, settled back on Atlas’ shoulders. Sound reanimates and Cristen can hear the fizzle of two football players in quiet conference, and the softest touch of feet to Earth she’s ever heard, like a spirits tail stroking a shadow.

Every other feeling returns in earnest. She has to blink the weight of her own brain away, because he’s gone and the noise of the world is suddenly back like he’d stolen it away for himself.

Hm. Totally not concerning.

Cristen’s curiosity peaks, and she forgets about the almost-argument with Bullet, she forgets that Reese told her to be careful, and she forgets the worry in Lucy’s eyes. She strides her way across the sidelines of the field and under the uprights, eyes narrowed on the place where he’d evaporated.

He could be… No, he was a threat, because her instincts were never wrong.

She puts a hand to the cool stands, ducking beneath the metal and peering down the rows of scaffolding. She avoids stretching the tight uniform skirt the Academy issues and steps over the framework, scanning the area for the strangely attractive boy. The mental comment is followed by Cristen’s mental Laureline, saying, _you sound like one of those fanfiction girls who falls for the hero on the spot._

Maybe it’s a Cristen cliche. But no… Cristen Young is the hero.

He’s gone. She’d only glanced at him for a moment, and yet his face is ingrained into her mind, buried there as if it belonged. Tanned skin, hidden hands, tall stride. Usually the first thing you notice about someone is the way they hold themself, but never the eyes… it’s what makes the green flickering behind her lids so suspicious. Cristen wants to call him familiar. Whatever she’s feeling—insight aside—is more than deja-vu… a much stronger brother, no doubt.

There was a beat of silence. The cool wind of the encroaching evening rolled through the bleacher’s mouth, sweeping over her and the metal in a darkening and unforgiving fog. The thought laid on her mind; she’d met him before. She didn’t know why this was her first thought, but she could tell his voice was even and condescending and almost… boyish, somehow.

It’s nothing, Cristen soothed. She started to walk back, arms tight. I’m probably just tired, or it’s just someone lingering from practice. It’s nothing. Just another insufferable day.

But it—or rather he—was certainly not nothing.


	5. act 1, chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cristen shoots up, grasping her throat, and breathes her way out of a nightmare and into the real world.

**WHEN THE CAT'S AWAY, MICE PLAY**

 

 **GOTHAM CITY; OLD GOTHAM DISTRICT; YOUNG HOUSEHOLD | 9:35 PM | AUG. 29TH | CRISTEN YOUNG**.

 _THERE’S THE THICK_ silence that Cristen’s scream just couldn’t fill, and then the body hits the water and she’s running and she’s diving and she’s  _too damn late—_

Cristen shoots up _,_ grasping her throat, and breathes her way out of a nightmare and into the real world. Water subsides into stifling steam. Terror slips into relief.

It’s storming like hell out. It’s less of a storm and more of a calamity, innocent rain whipped up into it like ingredients into hurricane batter. She still gives it the thanks it deserves. Rain is always a good thing, even if Cristen doesn’t know how just yet.

She has to feel around her covers to confirm her thoughts; she isn’t curled up between crates at the docs, the salted, exhaust-scented air coating her skin and damp clothing; her pack isn’t used as a hard, awkwardly-shaped pillow and she isn’t hidden under the cover of cardboard. Cristen is home.

The rain has not woken her as an reminder to find Laureline. It’s woken her to welcome her home.

Cristen sighs into her taut palms, rubbing the sleep from her vision and blinking rapidly, almost stunned. _Third night in a row._

She does her breathing exercises. Lucy and Bullet were right, to some degree; Cristen hasn’t had that dream since she was last in Gotham nearly six whole years ago. This city  _is_ doing something to her. But that doesn’t mean she’s abandoning it.

The clouds and the rainfall have dyed her room an aging blue, the lights of the city fractured by the rain and scattered across her carpet in miniature shattered disks of radiance. She presses herself off her mattress and steps over the box her bed came in. There’s a light curse as she tramples on something hard; a half-cooked prototype waiting for her return, among another dozen in the box she’d landed in. Powers haven’t woken up yet.

She’s hungry. It’s more in her fists than in her stomach.

The penthouse feels like something that doesn’t belong to Cris, that she shouldn’t be there. Anyone could brush this off as her not being accustomed to the luxury. She’s been living with Reese—who was known as Reese Fox before he married Lance, and therefore apart of the most ambitious family out there—for years, though. Maybe it’s not the price tag on the fridge, but the skeletons in the closet.

The glass of water is just as cold as it is outside. But Cristen doesn’t  _know_ that, so she decides she has to find out for herself. (It’s a dumb excuse, trust me, she knows).

 _To study_ , she soothes. To greet an old teacher and tell of her adventures, to scour the territory she was raised to protect—and that legacy begins with Red Hood.

He kinda sucks. Well, he really doesn’t, and that’s the cool part. Cristen’s gone out four or five times already since they got back to Gotham two weeks ago, and every  _single_ time he’s managed to beat her to the punch. She hears a drugstore robbery down the street. Halfway across the roof, the bullet (rubber, she checked) fires and he’s gone. He’s so proficient she’s starting to think that she’s gonna have to plot out some territory for herself or something—

Territory.

 _Patrol zones._ Of course! Robin said they had patrol zones. Red Hood must protect the financial district, where Cristen now lived. Maybe she could make a plot or a map of some kind… memorize the popular crimes in each territory… know Gotham like she knew herself. That’s what Robin would do; plot out enemy territory and go in with a plan. Why hadn’t she thought of it before?

She printed out a map of Gotham and slapped it onto a corkboard, writing clearly (in red marker)  _RED HOOD_ over the Financial District. As far as she knew, Batman and Robin wove around Park Row or maybe even the whole of the city. Then that was where she would head tonight. Even if she had to cross the biggest bridge to get to it.

The usual cover would be needed. Reese is gonna start catching on to when she leaves and when she comes back, but that’s only because of the news reports have been tattling;  _someone that we think is Nightwing is definitely fighting crime here_. Cristen’s fine with that. The credit isn’t needed and it isn’t wanted.  _Especially_ if she’s being compared to Nightwing, but that’s a special thought kept exclusively for herself.

She drops down to her knees and drags a box out of her closet. She looks it over like she would look at a rat or something, brimming with useless wariness.  _It’s just a box,_ Cristen reminds herself,  _just a box full of memories I’m almost too scared to look at… How stupid is that?_

Cristen had figured that moving back to Gotham would bring back some memories, but she hadn’t expected so  _much_. She holds her breath and plucks her childhood out of the space. Cristen doesn’t bother to admire anything, dipping her hands into the mass and beginning to search for her old jacket, movements messy and time wasted. She heaves another sigh when her fingers catch on something else metal.

Her thumb catch on the  _R’s_ outline, the red and green paint barely there anymore, and the golden metal nearly rusted over. It’s a silly thing to hope for, but she wants to see him again. That talk had been her everything.

And yet to him, it was just another good deed, another person saved. There would always be people like Cristen—so what was the point in hoping she would ever get the chance to say  _thank you?_

The old, tattered jacket barely fits her, but it supplies warmth and simultaneously the freedom of mobility. It was perfect for fast escapes and faster fights. She slipped the R into the pocket and headed for the door.

Before she went to write Reese a note in case he woke up and she was still out, she gave her closet another look. In particular, the golden shine of one of her rings caught her eye. She needed a plan, and there it was; maybe she should ditch the jacket for something nicer.  _Bait_.

Reese might not be happy she’s putting all of his ‘please love your new dad’ gifts into such situations, but he can be mad about it once she’s taken out a mugger or two. Or three. Cristen digs through the prototype box and reaches for a trip-sensor in progress to tinker with, then heads out.

 

 _THE KIDS IN_  town used to call her  _Sparrow_.

It was a silly name, just a gimmick, but Gotham had a thing for gimmicks.

Word of her fights would slide their way down the street like sludge; something interesting to point out, but never newsworthy. That winning reputation  _had_ been useful. Of course, Cristen was a cocky little kid who thought she was a hero no one could beat, just because she had her cute little superpowers to protect her.

It was really the only reason she ever won. It was also the only reason she thought she had any skill in a fight at all.

 _But I’m not Sparrow anymore_ , Cristen thought as she started down the street. She made sure to stand tall and walk smooth once she left, ring out in the open and the label on her jacket popped, baiting fish in a very dangerous pond. Her hands rubbed along her metal gadget in search for wounds to repair.  _Sparrow is that kid’s name. If I ever was a kid._

By the time the broken lights of the rundown Monarch Theater look down at her, the rain had stuttered to a gentle shower. Her walk had been too occupied with thoughts of school to notice. The boy underneath the bleachers came back to her too, with his unwavering green eyes and palpable dangerousness. She wondered if he’d be at the Academy when she started. Maybe he was like her… stupidly passionate about Gotham.

Wait, why was she thinking of  _that?_ He was a threat. She’d need to seek him out, if anything, and spy until she found out what he was up to. He was probably just some punk-ass boy selling ‘designer’ weed to the rich kids. She’d need to keep an eye out for other suppliers.

Some late-night walkers are trying to move as fast as they can without being noticed. It’s dangerous to be out this late. It’s why Cristen’s here. She’s always been here, even if her body is in Fawcett and her mind is in Gotham. Her  _soul_ is always here. Can’t leave where you’re born.

It was once beautiful. All of the other buildings in Park Row are too far gone, stripped of even the barest natural beauty, down to the core belief and impossibility of it  _ever_ being luxurious. Cristen had never seen this theater in its prime. But, like an old woman admiring old pearls, there’s a forlorn allure in the happiness it had once brought.

 _MO AR E TER_ , the sign informs.

The woman is a ghost now. Every bulb behind the marquee is burst or broken, what was once a golden ripple in the puddles of rain is not even a twinkle in the eye. A ‘ _for sale’_  sign hangs in the last non-broken door. It’s the same one from when Cristen and Laureline would walk down this same street, every year the ceiling slumped in another inch, every year another wall collapsing.

She rubs her fingers along decade-old posters and graffiti. The ink from the  _Mark of Zorro_ drags against her fingers as she passes it, and she idly paints a smiley face on what must have been the ticket booth—it’s more of a grimy, filthy, chrome mirror. Her reflection in it is freckled with dirt.

The image makes her look herself again. The face looking back reminds her of someone else, someone close that she’s never truly known, and maybe never will know. Still interesting how mystery is familiar.

When it comes to appearances, hair, basic face-shape and skin tone are typically catalogued and noticed first. Notable additions—scars, unusual marks, uncommon characteristics in general—are added too. It’s rare to actually address someone’s eye color unless it is out of place, and not uncommon to take into account things like body language or status.

But the nuns at Persephone’s all pointed out the same thing; Cristen and her mother did not have similar eye colors, but they shared  _looks_. Like they’d been through something words couldn’t describe.

Like they’d seen things.

Cristen pulls her hood over her rain-tangled hair and strides into the alleyway.

At its mouth, Cristen can see the very end past at least ten buildings on either side, marked by concrete steps littered with cigarette stubs and graffitied dumpsters. Cristen knows she has arrived when runny, red spray paint greets her.  _Welcome to Crime Alley!_ It shouts, accusatory and narrow. Bricks awash with phrases and tags and  _voices_ , all angry, all gone and cursed by every lingering spirit of the dead.

She takes a water bottle filled up by the rain and cleans off  _Crime Alley_ , replacing it with a chalked-in  _Park Row_.

Cristen, for a moment, regrets  _wanting_ to come here. It was called Crime Alley for a reason. People were mugged, hurt,  _killed_ here, and for some reason in her head it was almost a good place. She’d met Robin here, which only made it special to  _her_. This stupid, marked up alleyway, graffiti-ed to hell with every crime ever committed here. Every scream and sign of struggle. Every last memory personified…  _here_. A great list of sins and the names of a hundred victims.

There’s a name on the walls that isn’t included in this charter, but the introduction isn’t necessary. Even  _speaking_ it isn’t necessary. It’s almost a taboo around these parts, like even one of its names will draw a gunman from the shadows, the rain weighing down on this part of the Earth like a magnet or a dip in the crust.

It’s formally known as The Park Row Tragedy, but calling it the Wayne Murders will raise the same result.

Something in her chest stirs. A raw and whole form of misery bled into the streets, into the very  _heart_ of the city, all of it gliding down the drains and brewing into the sewer until it reaches here: ground zero. Gotham had loved the Waynes.

She doesn’t know much of the details. Wayne Enterprises is famous for its warm grip around the worlds’ hand, innovation and creation for the better of humanity, but the company that hosts the largest events for the smallest holidays does nothing on the 26th of June, the day of the murder. They even own the theater, but the land has yet to be replaced and replenished… for the better of humanity.

Reese’s brother Lucius works at Wayne Enterprises. He was a busy, busy man, to the point where Cristen rarely saw her cousins despite now living in Gotham. She and Reese were really the only (technical) Fox’s who didn’t work there. Luke did his own personal projects in the R&D department. Tiffany was the manager of the Wayne Enterprises' ghetto drug-rehabilitation program. Tam had even been  _engaged_ to Tim Wayne once, too.

Cristen honestly didn’t know why she hadn’t met any of the Waynes, but the more she thought about it… She probably didn’t want to.

Reese’s lips would always tighten when the Fox’s had to leave a family thing for work, so maybe he was a  _little_ bitter. Okay,  _a lot_ bitter. But he really couldn’t judge: he was an ex-police Captain, and even now Cristen knew he had been violently dedicated to cleaning up the corruption. He’d told her dozens of stories about how he refused to take bribes and sacrificed everything to do the right thing. Cristen’s the same way—so it was definitely a family thing, then.

It could have also been because of Lance, who had been an avid scientist in his life, and had gotten killed for working too hard… even if the papers and the police claimed it was a suicide.

They’d been trying for years to find evidence to support the theory that Lex Luthor had killed him for prying into ‘company matters’ that didn’t involve him. Of course, Luthor’s men were snapping shut the mouth of anyone who seemed to know something; Cristen, of course, had a steel jaw.

Standing here, standing where Cristen and Robin had stood together and met for the very first time, shared the same space, made an air of freedom leak into her pores and fill her lungs. Her memories of Lance were thick with freedom and enjoyment; he had been all too stressed about Cristen’s adoption and wanted desperately for her to like him, and thus developed the ‘cool dad’ countenance that always put her at ease.

_“Why is she screaming like that? It’s just a bug,” Cristen frowned at the screen, stuffing more popcorn in her face. Indiana Jones was currently inside the Temple of Doom, a place swarmed with bugs the size of her hands and cobwebs as thick as the comforter over her shoulders._

_Lance had hesitantly started pushing her curls out of her face, brushing back methodically at their stubborn need to bounce back against her eyes. “It’s the 80s, so it was pretty misogynistic. They didn’t think there were girls like you out there, capable of being girls but still doing heroic stuff—you’re less of a Willie and more of an Indy.”_

_“Damn right,” Cristen said._

_Reese flicked her on the ear and smiled at his husband, “Hey, Indiana_ was  _afraid of one thing.”_

_The next second she was being rolled over and tickled everywhere, across her belly and under her arms like vipers, shrieking with laughter as Reese and Lance yelled together, “Snakes!”_

She was grinning to herself at the memory. Cristen can almost see Robin’s cape disappearing over the rooftops, too. The rain is reminiscent of that night, cool and soothing, so she tilts back her head to bathe in it. Feelings trade hands of cards and remain the same.

Then her eyes go wide.

This alleyway must be some sort of destiny hot-spot, or maybe a reverse Bermuda Triangle in the slums. Because when Cristen looks up, the white-hot flash of lightning carving it’s mark into the sky above her, a pair of shadows fly overhead. Shadows with wings. Shadows with  _capes_.

Without hesitation, Cristen backs into the opposite wall of the alleyway. She takes in a swift breath, and by natural tendency her feet rush forward, her hands clasp the metal rail of a fire escape, and both work to bring her to the roof with inhuman speed and agility. She’s after those capes like the snap of a rubber band.

She didn’t like it; that was the old way, going in blind with her fist raised (and her thumbs tucked under her fingers, because she was stupid and didn’t know how to punch). In the years she spent in Gotham’s muck she had learned how to hone it, manipulate and understand it, in the way that’s making her slow her pace. She trained with people she shouldn’t have to get these skills—she shouldn’t forget about them over an excitement.

 _What would I do if I caught up with them? What would I say?_  Cristen asked herself.  _Hi, I’m Cris, and I’m a major fan of the way you beat the hell out of criminals. Sign my face?_  She mocked herself. ( _I don’t even have a pen!_ )

But, again, her feet do more work than her brain, and before she has time to decipher how many rooftops she has leapt across she’s standing above the alley the shadows disappeared to. Her talisman reveals itself under the cover of a chimney.

The moonlight slants over the alley, snipped off the edge by hollow darkness. It’s quiet.

It’s quiet, like the whole world has silenced in anticipation, even the distant cars and the water slowing to a stop to listen. Then the shadows move. Little white slits glance down the alley, and like ink had been poured, the shade took a vaguely human form and skulked its way around the slender body of a car.

Like magic, a glove revealed itself from the ink and drew down upon the cars surface. What had once been a lousy Ford Pinto suddenly morphed… Panels drew back and flipped, mechanics whirred and hummed, little wires clicking and data colliding under electric eyes. The motor purred, and the Pinto was gone.

Replaced by the most  _badass_ vehicle Cristen had ever  _seen_.

The ink hand drew back, eyes of milky white sliding over the veiled part of the space. Then he  _spoke_. His voice was like rain, like thunder, and lacked the inflection a question should normally possess. It was like the automated voice on a phone-call, or the snipped words of the AI in your phone—but still somehow deeper and  _human_.

“You coming,” asked the Batman.

Batman was nothing what the newspapers and witness accounts had described in the past. They said he was seven feet tall with massive, shredded black wings, claws as long as your arms and teeth to match. But like Cristen sensibly expected, he’s a man—an almost uncomfortably bulky, around-six-foot man, but a man all the same.

The word ‘man’ doesn’t seem appropriate, though. No man could move as silently as that. No man could command the dark like he did, make the night unravel into a thread to re-weave into something new. No man  _talked_ like that, either. Now she knows why the stories about him were so unbelievable; this man was myth, fair and square.

She just hopes he doesn’t see her. But in some way, she feels that he’ll  _sense_  her. He  _is_ Batman...

So caught up in the fact that he was  _real_ , Cristen stiffened.  _Is he talking to me? Please don’t be talking to me. But, like, also—please?_

Behind the whirling cloud of memories and awe, there’s something almost like a rational thought, and it’s so surprising to hear in her own mind Cristen almost laughs. She is  _so_ going to get arrested or something.

Her wonder is met with Robin.

Again, the shadows part, ink and paint washed together into royal tones of green and maroon. A flicker of gold winks at her from the trim of his cape and the symbol on his breast. She would have believed it was  _her_ R if she couldn’t feel the weight of it in her pocket right then and there.

In Cristen’s memory there’s a boy with round cheeks and pointy elbows, but  _this_ Robin is all new and all different. He’s built like a sports car, angular and lean and muscular and  _tall_. If it’s anything about him that surprised her, it’s the height. He’d been nearly two whole heads shorter than her the last time she’d seen him. What in the hell  _happened?_

He doesn’t walk. He’s doesn’t glide like Batman does, either. He seems to  _stalk_ , commanding the scene, clinging to the darkness and barely blinking under the glow of the street-lamp. The behavior is similar to what he’d done years ago. But… perfected. Smoothed down and unwrinkled, without fault or crack in composure.

His voice isn’t boyish anymore, either.

“ _You_  seem to be in no hurry, father,” Robin says, pointed. It is also disapproving.

The scars are  _everywhere_. His collar is tall enough to protect his throat, but his chin and his nose and his eyebrow are decorated with them like medals of honor—there’s even a little bit of his ear missing, reminiscent of a stray turned K-9 unit. It gets worse the closer she looks; his lip is dimpled from being split so often, and little ones like beauty marks paint his cheeks.

On his jaw, there is a fresh, unbandaged wound like a gritty smile. The blood slips down his chin and dribbles onto his collar, but he does nothing about it.

“I need to bring the samples back to the cave.” There’s something on the end of the sentence left hanging, a reference to information Robin should already know. “I’m trusting you—”

“I know.” Robin nods. That must be enough, as Batman grunts or huffs something in return, then slips down into the car.

With a sharp, “Get that wound bandaged,” the Batman is a shadow against the warm light of the inner-city’s midnight horizon.

Cristen’s emotions are hard to decipher in the blur of it all. Exhilaration, adrenaline, nostalgia stirred into a hot soup in her mind. But Cristen knows that, above all, that  _fight_ still beats in her chest and for once she feels it in others. She can see it in the way Batman observes his surroundings, and the way Robin’s shoulders roll.

She glances down at the R; they have the  _reason_. They have the answer to  _why_.

Cristen almost drops the sensor she’s working on, only to realize it’s been crushed in her excited grip.

An unspoken goodbye hung between the two. If there was one thing she didn’t like about that situation, it was the lack of parting words. Robin was his son, so where was the  _I love you?_ Everytime Cristen even stood up to go into the  _kitchen_ Reese would utter the words. She didn’t know their rituals or what their relationship was like, but regardless, it still bothered her. Made her wonder. She could tell that it unnerved Robin too: the moment the car turned the corner he bowed his head and sighed, the sound thick in his throat and muddled with frustration.

 _Okay_ , Cristen thought, slipping deeper into the shadows with her ears perking and reddening in the cold, _time to be rational_. The rain had begun to flutter out in short and infrequent bursts. It’s fight against Cristen’s jacket lessened as the engine’s life fell away from her ears, as if beckoned away by it.

Only then does the information start to click into place, does her mind start to work (if only barely). He said  _cave_. Oh my god—like,  _man_ cave? Secret lair? Was it an actual cave, or was it like the Fortress of Solitude where it just had a cool name? And what about—about  _father?_ Robin had called Batman  _father_. They were father and son, through Cristen supposed it would be weirder if they weren’t.

The questions were starting to make her brain hurt.

He shakes his head at The Batman’s exit and clicks his tongue. It lights up a part of Cristen’s memory, nearly shorting it out, and she tries not to smile. It’s him. It’s… really him.

When she met Robin things had been… ineffable. Her heart was up in her throat, her hands were clammy (and bleeding), and her voice was a nervous whisper in fear of embarrassing herself in front of him. She had not quite grasped  _why_ she should be doing this, why she should be fighting and helping people, other than her natural want to be good. There was no other purpose behind it other than the win.

But she had her purpose now. This wasn’t just for the victory, the invisible medal gifted to her when another villain slid back into the sewers. This was for  _Laureline_. For Reese and his husband Lance, for Bullet and Lucy, even mystery boy. Cristen had decided she was going to fight because the tragedies that befell them could never happen again—and she had the power to help, so why not  _use_ it?

She hates that it’s the first thing that comes to mind, but Cristen quotes it anyway.  _With great power comes great responsibility_.

Cristen has the power to save people. It’s her responsibility, her job, her duty, to use them for that purpose.

She knew that Robin did this too, she knew he had the reason, but that didn’t stop her from feeling like she was insane. It wasn’t a normal thing. A part of her wanted to be normal, yes. But how could she ever be? At least she wasn’t alone… It was better being insane with someone else than insane by yourself.

(Well, maybe that wasn’t the proper analogy. But you get the point.)

Robin stood still. He looked up, first admiring the moon under pale lenses, then turning toward the sky on the other side of the island. Waiting. Waiting for light, and for the beautiful relief of another life saved.

He didn’t see her. He didn’t even spare her a glance, a thought, the prickling sensation on the back of a person’s neck when being watched. She was  _enormously_ lucky. With that thought in mind, Cristen sensibly pushed herself off the brick chimney and snuck away from the edge.

And then she is running, taking off into the night at full speed, trying desperately to hold in how loud she wanted to yell and whoop and holler.  _It’s him_ ,  _it’s him_ ,  _and that whole night wasn’t just a wild fever dream_ , she thought.

She had always imagined that there was something wrong with her. Her powers—I mean, what  _were_ they? Where did they come from? What did they mean? That part was the blatant bit, but the stupid Spider-Man quote comes back to her. She had the ability and the incentive and the advantage to help people, so why not? Batman and Robin were the same way; they had the incentive and whatever else to help. So they did.

With a great leap, she landed on her hands and flipped down into an alley, disappearing with her hood trailing behind her, giggling just loud enough for only herself to hear…

**| DAMIAN**

_IT WAS A_ beautiful night. Robin could never admit how nice it was; the cool titter of rain in his ears, the purr of distant motors, the breeze catching his cape and snapping it back all a simple serenity. He didn’t have any of this as Damian Wayne. That was only another reason why being benched was so unbelievably unbearable—he missed fighting at father’s side, he missed the view, and he couldn’t have gone another hour without justice being served. There were still too many sins on his plate.

Even if Damian was on his off hours, he  _was_ still Robin—minus the sights and tools, of course. The world’s definition is turned on to its full setting. Every small little laugh, every wave of hands, micro-expressions and too-quick reactions culminating into a thousand different stories for every person he passed. He can see it all. He can feel it all, and sometimes he still has to remind himself that teenagers make  _noise_ when they walk.

The one thing that could really trip him up, trip Robin up, was when he made a mistake. It all came down to the very first domino as it toppled. Today’s domino had been the girl on the field. She’d nearly caught him half-way out of uniform, but it was over, so the only thing he could do was assure himself (repeatedly) that she hadn’t seen him. That she forgot about him. That she didn’t know the secret.

Even if he couldn’t quite forget about her. He’s  _rusty_ —the word alone is disgraceful. Not to mention how coldly father has been treating him as of late.

There’s a little sound somewhere far off. Damian doesn’t register it at first, but his subconscious hums in a pressing sort of way. His eyes swivel around the moon just as the clouds smooth to cover it, and that was a  _shadow_ —where had it gone? No. Just a trick of the light. Just Damian on edge, because he made one stupid little mistake and he  _knows_ he’s going to pay for it. Dominos.

The grapple is produced from his cape, and there’s the split-second decision of where to fire it before it’s already shot and he’s carried into the air, the rope a lifeline in his grip. His eyes center on that alleyway and search the darkness for the millisecond in which it goes by—no one is there. No one is in Park Row.

Damian Wayne dismisses the idea, but he doesn’t dare lose it; he’s not stupid enough to brush off such a thing. This is because Damian Wayne is Robin, the heir to the mantle of Batman, and Batman and Robin have all sorts of enemies. Especially ones that lie in the shadows.


	6. act 1, chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He owed her. That's all Cristen could think about.

**NOT A PERFECT SOLDIER**

 

**GOTHAM CITY; THE BOWERY; PARK ROW | YEARS AGO | CRISTEN**

_HE OWED HER._

That’s all that Cristen could think about. From the moment she left the scene in the alley to waking up in bed, it was the one thing on her mind. After all this time, after all this waiting… Robin owed Cristen.

Because, truthfully, she had encountered Robin one more time before that first day back in Gotham.

In Jersey, the land slopped southward and was therefore a perfectly crafted sun trap—everywhere but for Gotham, at least. It was almost as if there was a heavy forcefield wrapped around the island, going as far out as the harbor to prohibit any sun from passing through. The only way any of it could get in was off the water. After it baked in the light all day it washed ashore and struck that cold shield, minced into a clean stratus that rolled onto land.

Cloying heat like that never bothered Cristen. She’d thought for a long time that she was simply lucky, but experience deduced it was just another _ability_ she had yet to understand. Thought it could hardly be deemed an ability. Cristen didn’t sweat, didn’t breathe as much, and had never seen any of her own blood before. Another thing to set her apart from everyone else, another factoid that made her a freak of nature.

It had been two months since Laureline died. After meeting Robin, Cristen’s determination to fight their local criminal elements doubled. A high had been reached after very little time, and feeling stupidly invincible, she invited Laureline to tag along on the stakeout that took her life.

Everyone in the city had something to mourn. Cristen had always felt lonely, in a innate way out of her reach, but now she was truly and wholey alone. Laureline was dead. A sudden rush of her other friends were travelling (Miles) or adapted into the system (Kendra, Colin, etcetera). For the first time in years, Cristen was that kid sitting in the corner and staring at the wall again.

Really. There was a bar called ‘The Wall’ downtown famous for housing corrupt cops, and Cristen’s mission was to sneak in through the back and get proof they were dirty. Trick was that she had to space out when and where she found and turned in the evidence. It was this that got her caught. A couple of the smarter ones connected past clues to the bar… and then to Cristen.

Nine o’ clock on a beautiful summer night, and Cristen’s getting her ass beat in an alleyway. Really was surprising to see that it had been the worst thing to happen to her that week.

Cristen really only remembered everything prior to that night because she’d saved up to see _Captain America: The First Avenger_ , and loved it so violently that she went through this whole stupid phase…

“Come on,” encouraged an officer, stomping on her ribs. “Get up! Not so confident now, huh, _chica_?”

Cristen, stupidly determined and most definitely depressed, stumbled to her feet and wielded the lid on a garbage can like a shield. “...I can do this all day.”

A part of her present self was still caught in that old tiredness, exhaustion so deep it ingrained itself in her DNA. Cristen was both at her most active and at her worst. She wouldn’t go down, refused to, fueled by guilt and silently standing still to take the punch that might kill her.

Pathetic, really. Pathetic and lonely. _Of course_ Robin found her like that, instead of… whatever the opposite of numb was. Cristen, at the time, would have no idea.

For the hundredth time, they traded turns with her, kicking and shoving at their leisure and laughing when she wobbled harder each time. Cristen almost felt willing to give in. Almost felt ready to just get up and run, see her blood and feel it all on the same day.

_You start running they'll never let you stop. You stand up, push back. Can't say no forever, right?_

Stupid, stupid Captain America. Being right all the time. Hands scuffed and arms shaking, Cristen pressed off her fists and kept them coiled, wavering in the stance that Robin had taught her.

“Ooh,” hummed the second officer. “She’s got her little fists raised. Better watch out, Owens, or she might just clip ya—”

Cristen did more than _clip_ him. Perhaps she’d even put too much strength into it, as he flew back… and straight into Robin’s grip.

“I understand you have a role to play—the corrupt cop—but must you be so corrupt that you combat _children?_ ” Robin pushed the officer’s arms back and locked them into cuffs, harshly cracking his leg behind his knee and taking him down. “Only the _weak_ prey upon the innocent.”

Either Cristen knew he could handle it or was so exhausted she couldn’t care, she flopped against the brick behind her and sunk to sit. Robin dealt swiftly with the other one. He ID-ed them and reported it while Cristen caught her breath, glancing at her out of the corner of his mask.

 _He won’t remember you_ , a hopeless part of her mind suggested. _Robin’s too smart to waste anything on you, nevermind his memory. Nevermind his time. Why would he want to, with the things you’ve done?_

Fog filled her lungs, soothing and cool against the heated night. Cristen was not sweating, but her body produced a phantom replica that had her scrubbing her hairline and legs, only to come back with something hot and sticky. Blood.

Cristen stared at it in amazement. She was aware she’d gotten a bloody nose, but to taste the blood and see it for herself was so out-of-body and foreign—was she dying?

“I see you’ve taken my advice to heart,” chuffed Robin. He offered his gauntlet, “Can you stand?”

Humming noncommittally, she took his hand and felt herself return by a fraction. It was a small hand, as Robin was generally pretty small, nearly a whole head below her in height. To see the colors on his cape and hear his voice was to bring Cristen to a time of happiness and goodness. She had grown more than he had, but that was unsurprising: Robin was a permanent fixture that only changed in unseeable ways. A ghost that remained the way they died.

“‘M fine,” Cristen said. “Probably don’t look like it at all, but I am.”

She was not. This was something known to both of them, and Robin loudly complained it. “You’re a horrible liar. You require bandaging and antibiotics.”

Simply allowing him to take the lead was easier than protesting, as Cristen didn’t have the capacity to come up with any argument anyway. She was in a limbo between passing out and gaining back her embarrassment. Robin had come back. This was their utterly insufferable day, and it was definitely starting to feel like it.

“So,” Cristen started. “How are you?”

Robin snorted, and began to direct them to a building across the street. They would have medical supplies and ice. “Busy.”

“Do you mean that, like, _I’ve been pretty busy lately_ , or um, _shut up I’m busy_.”

He only grunted at her, taking her arm over his shoulder and picking up her footing to increase their speed. Cristen’s heart finally earned a brain and figured out precisely what was going on. Robin was back, helping her across the street, and he was totally touching her waist and his hair was soft and sweaty on her arm.

It had been three months, maybe, but something about him instilled silly feelings into her again. If they had even left in the first place; his R felt warmer in her pocket than usual. They were pressed close enough together where he could feel it if he wanted to—perhaps that was why he was smirking.

“Forgot how bad you’re at talking,” Cristen laughed, coughing.

Damian set her against the front of the closed establishment as if she was something heavy he was carrying, and rolled his eyes. “I forgot how astute you are with language.”

Though initially harsh, the phrase was said with mild amusement. Cristen couldn’t help but feel her heartbeat pickup. Robin remembered her. Maybe not enough to get a name, but—had she even told him her name? She wasn’t going to. If he needed to, he would turn her in, and a name would only make things easier.

Robin suddenly appeared from the inside and opened the door to allow her in. Cristen took her time and apparently shorted out his impatience mainframe, because Mr. Robot helped Cristen through and huffed as they did.

“My name’s Maria, by the way,” said Cristen.

Robin chuckled, surprising her. “No, it’s not.”

“And how do you know?”

Stepping away to lift a barrier for her, Robin said, “Your pulse changed tempo and you began to blink faster. And if I recall correctly, Maria is the main character from your favorite stage play. I’m not so easily fooled.”

It was dark enough in the space where Cristen’s spotty vision couldn’t make out what kind of building they were in, exactly, but Robin’s mask had night vision and they cleared through to a back room regardless. She gained a steadier gait but let him help her anyway. Totally not because he smelled good. Totally not because he remembered her favorite stage play.

“As cool as it is that you figured that out or whatever,” said Cristen, “I’m not gonna say anything back to protect my pride. Just call me Maria.”

“And why should I?” asked Robin.

Cristen shrugged. “You’ll report me to some dumb shelter or whatever. I like where I am now. I’m not getting put in a foster home and messing up all that I can learn.”

Robin found the light to reveal a small office aside a wall of prizes and a case of candies. There was a bin of recycling beneath the counter full of tickets, which could only mean—

Cristen looked up and her vision rounded out, filling in dark purple shapes and neon colors in the little light she had. The floor was that silly celebration pattern and bedecked in dozens upon dozens of video games. They were in an arcade, a place Cristen had only dreamed about, and she was not going to be denied this epic chance to utterly destroy Dance Dance Revolution’s holder for the highest score.

After sweeping the back offices for a first aid kit, Robin secured one and spent the journey back to Cristen muttering about proper preparation. He returned to find the burglar alarm disabled, the register pried open by a knife, and the colorful lights and sounds of an active arcade playing avidly across the counter.

“Goddammit.”

Somehow, in the little time Robin had disappeared, Cristen had found her way to a game and was firing a blaster at badly-animated aliens. Painted hues of red and blue by the screen’s display, Cristen’s eyes were wide with excitement and her face was filled with laughter.

“I should take you into custody, you know,” Robin threatened, crossing his arms. “That’s _theft_.”

Cristen paused to prepare herself for the next level of the game, changing her footing and holding the suspiciously sticky gun-shaped joystick like a soldier in position. “Oh, hush. It was ten dollars in coins that I’m putting back in _their_ _machine_. I’m not stealing the money. Just… moving it!”

“You’re _injured—_ ”

Robin was interrupted by Cristen’s delighted exclamation of _flamethrower!_ as the next level began, filling her pupils with fire and animating the drying blood on her nose like she was born for battle. Still, she was smiling. It felt good to do this. To be a kid after being something else for so long, and to adjust to fake fighting instead of the real alternative.

“Come along, already. I came in here to assist you, not entertain you. Get off the game and let’s—”

Again, Cristen interrupted him, but instead with her smile, “—make a deal? Great! I go through the rest of these coins and then we patch me up.”

Before he could differ in opinion, Cristen took his hand and pulled him into her side with surprising strength. She replaced his hands on the controls and helped him aim. “Come on! We can do it together.”

Though her offer was apparently pretty tempting (obviously), Robin struggled over it. How any boy their age struggled over whether to play video games was beyond Cristen. But to be fair, they were never normal and would never be normal, and something had clearly been stolen from both of them. For Robin to act this way meant… nothing good.

Now she _had_ to do this, and certainly not for Cristen’s own health.

“I have business to attend to.”

“Lame,” said Cristen, suddenly welling with happiness she hadn’t felt in months. It filled her ribcage and overtook all function. “Watch out! He’s going for your face!”

Without hesitation, Robin whipped back toward the game and fired a single, perfect shot into the head of the alien diving for him. Blood sprayed across the screen and melted down to reveal a title card.  _Level 3!_ Everything flashed under the support of colorful strobe and badass music.

“Okay,” admitted Robin upon unlocking a large sword for the next level, “One more game.”

 

WHAT WITH THE two of them being idiot kids traumatically addicted to violence, they returned to the register a total of three more times and had swept the entire gamefloor by the end of the hour. Not to mention the water guns they’d found behind the counter.

After being decimated at skeeball (Robin’s words), Cristen decided that she would beat him at the next game they came across. But because Robin was a cheater and definitely threw when he was supposed to roll, Cristen guiltily agreed to the idea that he would choose what game. So, obviously he went for the weird one in the corner that neither of them had played yet.

“ _Cheese Viking_ ,” echoed Cristen, humming. “Wait… I think I might have played this before! On a field trip or something. Prepare to get floor-wiped, Rob, because you’re going down.”

Robin snorted at her, batting at her arm playfully while she opened the menu. “Oh, please. It seems to be a game about fantasy cheeses. How simple must you be to not win a game like that?”

With pinkened ears and fluttery nerves, Cristen’s arm immediately tingled with the touch. Something is up with her powers. They’d never reacted to anyone like this before, and whether that was a product of the beating she took earlier or Robin, she was uncertain. But… it was also—probably—totally Robin.

They couldn’t stop… touching. Cristen would bump their hips together or tug on his cape, teeming with early teen anxiousness and liking, only for Robin to jokingly punch at her arm and pull her hair. Spit banter back and forth with her like she wasn’t blushing all over. Worse: he was definitely aware of it, but indefinitely interested in return.

This was happening. Robin was back, and they weren’t just talking. Between video games and contests, Cristen could feel herself like him more and more, reminded again and again of the night they met and much how it had changed her in so little time.

And how much he would hate her if he knew the truth.

“Even if—sorry, _when_ I totally kick your ass, and you, y’know, _lose_ , I hope you still like this game,” Cristen selected a versus mode and side-stepped to accommodate him. “I remember liking it.”

Robin opened his mouth to say something snarky, but cut it short and pressed his lips together. After a beat, he glanced at her sincerely and awkwardly. “Perhaps I will. You do, after all, have fairly acceptable taste.”

Tenderly, Cristen touched his shoulder, but then proceeded to bust out laughing. Robin reddened like the sky at dawn.

“How _sweet_ of you,” she heaved for breath, holding her belly. “Now, c’mon. Bring it! Winner gets the pick what we do next.”

After shoving each others shoulders and stealing joysticks and opposing buttons, the game ended in a perfect tie, which spat out a few bonus tickets as consolation. Robin snorted about how they should have a rematch. Cristen, briefly distracted by some colors behind him, dumbly shook her head.

“Or we could dance,” she said, watching the jukebox alternate between tones of teal and blue. It’s allure brought Cristen a few steps toward it. “Just for fun! We could have a dance off or something. Here, let me see what songs they have.”

 _Dancing_. Robin echoed internally, watching Cristen skip and twirl over to the machine with incredibly low amounts of grace. Dance as in waltzing? Robin could waltz. He'd like to waltz, with Cristen even, and that feeling hollowed out his gut and wounded him.

Building up a sudden forlorn attitude, Robin held back. It was nearly time. Cristen didn’t want to admit it and neither did he, but this night would have to end at some point. They could not stay here forever. This was supposed to be an insufferable day, not _days_. Or years. Or eternity, as his childish crush was silently demanding.

“We should stop,” says Robin. “I will bandage you, assure that you are home safe and then be on my way. Unlike you, I am chained by responsibility.”

“Chains can be broken, Rob,” said Cristen. She strode toward him and poked the symbol on his chest. “You taught me that. Dr. Robin can check me over or whatever, but I still have two coins left—just enough for a dance, and since your choice is to bandage me, we can spend the coins on my choice! It’s perfect.”

Again, Cristen gave him little room to argue, ushering him forward and toward the register. She merrily hopped up onto the prize counter and cracked open the kit. “Here!”

For the first time, Robin found his stomach rolling with longing, wanting to remain here as Cristen desired. To stay here forever, as the children they never got to be. Making up the same silly bets and challenging each other over and over again. He’d never liked anything so repetitive. But he was starting to love this.

He said nothing as he rubbed antibiotic ointment into her scrapes. Cristen chittered away, far happier than she had been before, and Robin’s cursed emotional brain connected that happiness to himself. She continued to talk even as he wiped the blood off her face—it is more than a little endearing, annoying as that may be.

“Look here,” said Cristen, unsheathing a pamphlet from a display. “This has a full list on the jukebox songs—and it has one of my favorites! Oh, we have to dance to that one, Robin. It’s this old song about dreams and the government. I don’t really know, but I really, really like it—”

Robin did not share her enthusiasm. He had lifted her shirt to apply the same care to the bruises on her ribs, silently brooding as he did. Cristen’s whole form seem to wilt. “Something wrong?”

Slowly, Robin set down the gauze. “This night must end soon. I know you don’t want to admit it, and neither do I…”

“Hey,” Cristen murmured, touching his arm. Robin’s gaze drew up to hers. “We still have time.”

And as if to prove a point, to prove how easily they could suspend this moment between them endlessly, Cristen leaned down and kissed him.

Robin froze before he did anything else. His training was broad and masterful, but he had never been taught something like this. But perhaps that was because something like this didn’t need to be learned at all. It was innate and beautiful, innocent in ways untouched by Damian’s life. Something he was never meant to learn, never meant to seek out, and yet he was here and she was still kissing him.

Cristen pulled off first, blinking slowly and digesting what she had done. The butterflies in her belly were moving so erratically she could hardly detect them any longer.

“Sorry,” she blurted. Like she’d bumped him accidentally, instead of kissing him.

Kissing him. Cristen had kissed him. She had kissed Robin with the kind of experience-less youth that had them just hold their faces together and go stiff. But Robin’s mouth was soft, minty even, and she wanted to kiss him again. And yet it’s hard to think about stuff like that when you’re dying of embarrassment.

Supremely, from his toes to his ears, Robin reddened. “...It’s alright.”

For a moment longer they remained trapped in that exchange, slowly melting into the idea, realizing how much they’d enjoyed it but conflicting over it regardless. Robin seemed to succumb faster than she. He was leaning in again, and Cristen was panicking… closer and closer… inches apart.

His communicator goes off.

Robin swallows hard with the sound. Cristen’s knees lock together and her legs are shaking a little, because Robin is unknotting his hand from her curls and dedicating them to his gauntlets. He steps aside to answer it. With his back turned to her, she wilts and tries not to blush so hard she loses feeling in her toes. She'd never kissed anyone before. She'd never, ever, been as brave as that, and it was all Robin's fault. Making her brave. This whole teenage gig is pretty dumb.

Angry, hushed voices invade the space that has only held theirs for so long. Robin mumbles alongside them in his original dulled tone. After the call ends, Robin shrinks into his cape in silence, and closes the communicator with a snap.

“I have curfew,” he confesses. Cristen pushes off the counter and doesn’t look at him, burning with guilt and regret and overreaction, only for Robin to shyly smile in her direction. “I’m afraid I will have to raincheck on that dance.”

Cristen swallows down her excitement. “Next Saturday. Here, at ten.”

“The storage room window is easy to squeeze through. Get rid of all the evidence of our time here, if you can,” says Robin. He begins the walk back into the backroom, Cristen trailing eagerly at his feet, only to flip up onto a shelf and grin below his hood.

Cristen reaches up for no reason she can discern, every nerve in her body overwritten by this invading virus called affection. When Robin wraps their hands together, she playfully sneers at him, “Don’t you dare be late.”

He leans in, ever so briefly, his eyes flicking across every detail on her face beneath his mask. Cristen longs to see what is underneath. Maybe when she squeezes his hand, Robin likes it. A horrible misstep.

With the soft flutter of his cape on the windowsill, this is the last Cristen Young sees of Robin for several years.

The first Saturday, Cristen breaks in, aware of how he might be kept by a Riddler crisis that morning. Robin does not show. She does her best not to mourn it, and decides to come the next Saturday after that. Still, Robin does not show, and her heart burns whenever she considers why.

Why was he late?

 _Maybe he’s busy_ , becomes, _I’m a waste of his time_. Where Cristen’s thoughts begin with, _he has responsibilities to tend to_ , they eventually end with, _he never wanted to come_. After years and years they are only ever: _I should have never kissed him. I ruined everything._

A small insecurity that has lasted ages and ages. Snowballed into something she can’t let go of, no matter how hard Cristen tries, as insignificant as it sounds without context. Robin forgot. Cristen hasn’t forgotten, but has forgiven. Where she is just a girl beaten in an alley he is a hero, a legend, a standard to aspire to.

And maybe Cristen is not a hero because that is what she was born to be. Maybe she is not a hero because she was a good person, wanting right for those who hurt her and her family. Maybe she tries to be one because it will take away the forgotten girl, the waste of time, and turn her into something useful—something Robin might want to remember.

On the third Saturday, Cristen meets Reese Young. And Robin still owes her.


	7. act 1, chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reese is tempted.

**CAT'S OUT OF THE BAG**

 

**GOTHAM CITY; OLD GOTHAM DISTRICT; YOUNG HOUSEHOLD | 11:24 AM | REESE YOUNG**

_REESE IS TEMPTED_ —very tempted—to open in on her with the whole sneaking out speech. Cristen has done this sort of thing before, so he knows the game she plays. A note is drawn up, she disappears for a couple hours, then returns and trashes the post-it like nothing ever happened. They had agreed upon a night that she would start and last night was not that night.

He’s allowed to act surprised when she clunks down the stairs, clad in quickly put on pajamas that he’s positive she didn’t even sleep in, rubbing at her eyes and yawning audibly. He knows better than to fall for her act. Her eyes didn’t hint with as much sleepiness as she usually had after a night of slumber. Her face wasn’t cutely puffed from resting for so long. She is tired, though—not I-just-woke-up tired, but more I-never-even-went-to-bed tired.

The living room is quite the scene. Despite the combined determination of Fox and Young, they hadn’t even skimmed the surface of unpacking entirely. Cristen adamantly insisted that she be the one to handle the general lifting, which was required for every part of the labor, narrowing him down to the little jobs. Reese appreciated it a lot like he appreciated her midnight-runs. It was unfair for her to do everything, even if she was a meta and he was (starting to get) old.

Mornings in the Young household consisted of Gotham’s Channel News Network and anchor Becky Marita relaying the week’s major events. The bored Jersey drawl of her voice was a murmur against the early morning traffic on the street. It was so loud that they could hear it from their upper floor, a canvas of shouts and clunky cars, thrashing water in the cement river bed of the avenue.

He nearly mistakes it for Fawcett with all the activity, but the palette’s all wrong. Fawcett is the reds and oranges and yellowed leaves of autumn, and Gotham is all rusted navy blues and washed-out greys and blacks. It’s precisely the reason why Reese moved Cristen to her home; too much sunlight isn’t good for his precious creature of the night.

“Oh, Cristen! You’re alive!” Reese cried, rejoicing with an overwhelming amount of sarcasm.

He has everything prepared for this lecture, and he’s sure that Cristen pales a shade when he looks at her narrowly. “Would you like to tell me where you were last night?”

Cristen has been taught under his roof too long to know to never make excuses. So instead, she opts for a different approach. She displayed herself, pulling up her sleeves and pant legs to prove her lack of wounds to him, “I’m sorry, Reese… I know I forgot a note or anything, but look! No injuries! I was just doing a couple rounds to get used to the layout again.”

Reese didn’t even bother to look back at the television screen, raising an eyebrow and pointing to it behind his back.

Beside Narita an image of the front steps to the GCPD appeared, on which stood a solitary statue of a lion… which had four unconscious figures tied to it. Becky smoothed her hands over her papers and delivered:

“Last night at around 11 PM, suspects Austin Welose, Noah ‘Biter’ Jone, Holly Morse, and Beatrice Gould were found at Gotham City Police headquarters.” She looked at the camera pointedly, “No cameras were able to catch the hero that delivered these infamous criminals, who have been linked to multiple break-ins and robberies in the last month.”

Now, beside the newscaster’s face, a photo of Batman and Robin was pasted. They were at an award ceremony in full costume. Cristen remembered that day; even if she lived in Fawcett at the time, there was no way she wasn’t going to keep track of her favorite heroes.

**FAWCETT CITY; DOWNTOWN| THREE YEARS AGO | CRISTEN**

_“HE’S NOT EVEN_ that cool.”

With as little arrogance as possible, it can most definitely be said that Cristen Young is special. Her physical capabilities and history are something to note, sure, but she is also an endlessly good person. To put her in a crowd of farmers and call her cattle is unjust. What is more unjust, in her opinion, in that she must tolerate other special people.

Especially special people who don’t consider Batman as totally epic as she does—as he so clearly is.

“He’s not even that cool,” Cristen mocked, dramatically flopping against the house they were peering into and posing like a greaser. “Who the hell do you think you are, Batson? Do you wanna go? Right now, in some grandma’s backyard?”

Billy Batson, though very unassuming in appearance, is easily much more special than Cristen. This is something she has long accepted. But as a subconscious rule for Ms. Young, all those more special than her—more good—are deserving of absolute reverence. Not like she’d ever let him know that.

“It’s just Mrs. Olson,” Billy swats away her hand, which is trying to mimic the weird thing he does when he stuffs his hands in his pockets, “She’d probably come out and give us cookies if she caught us fighting. And… all I’m saying is that, well, Batman isn’t that cool.”

In Cristen’s attempts to generously belittle him, Billy manages to catch her wrists and mock the pissy face she makes. “He’s just some old loser, y’know. Superman, Wonder Woman—” his voice shifts, sly, “Captain Marvel; they’re all way better favorite-superhero choices.”

She scoffs. “Never said Batman was my favorite.” Cristen leans in, “Do you wanna know who is?”

Billy flushes, and she’s again reminded of how sweet he is, despite what his mom screwed him over with and all the good the foster system had done him until now. “You don’t need to suck up. Just say the word.”

Cristen giggles, shoving him, “You say the word.”

“Does this look like an emergency to you?” He brushed off the places her hands touched on him like they hadn’t been flirting all afternoon.

To Cristen, it very much was an emergency; when she heard the ad on the television end, she hoisted herself up to Mrs. Olson’s windowsill and let Billy have fun trying to find room too. Instead he dutifully prepared for Cristen’s fall, complaining like he always did when she’d properly embarrassed him. Something warm in her belly unfurls.

“Why are we even trying to watch through her window?” Billy huffed, scrunching up his nose once her mud-streaked sneakers settle properly on his shoulders. Cristen has a dozen intrusive thoughts about kissing that nose, but then she thinks about her theories about Robin and they fade. “You have cable at your house.”

“But not a flat screen, mega-HD old lady retirement money TV.” Cristen casts a glance down at her fellow street rat, and smiles, “...And maybe I just wanted to spend some time with you.”

**GOTHAM CITY | NOW | CRISTEN**

“ _ACCORDING TO THE_ now in-custody criminals, Batman and Robin were not responsible for the arrest.” Narita glanced down at her papers and began to read, "All four agreed that their capturer was young, about the late teens, approximately 5’10”/177 cm, possibly female, and wearing black street-clothing. Red Robin, Spoiler, and namely Batgirl have been theorized, along with the supposed new hero, Cat—”

Cristen’s smirk dropped.

Reese cut off the TV with his voice, and kept his gaze on Cristen, pinning her as a bug under his microscope. She looks like she wants to listen to the rest of Becky’s news, but Reese shakes his head so loud it makes Cristen squirm, “Does that sound like you, Cristen?”

“Yes, sir.” Cristen nodded.

Reese knew how she was. What type of things she felt. She was driven by past mistakes, whittled down to a single commandment, built upon an event and a few choice words. He respected that fight in her, but Reese couldn’t deny the fact that it got her in a whole other world of trouble. A world that he couldn’t be in to protect her anymore. No, that was Cristen’s job now, and she was damn proud to know it.

He released a sigh. It wasn’t angry, or even disappointed. Not in Cristen’s actions at least, but the ones she was going to make in the future, and the things he wouldn’t be able to do for her anymore.

Cristen had wanted to find a healthy outlet for her sense of duty. Now that she had finally found it and was preparing to make things official, Reese found himself worrying more and more with each passing hour. Cristen could certainly defend herself—but from people like Bane? Maybe. (She’d certainly attempt to take him).

Worse—the Joker? The bastard was aging, but insanity stays with you till the very end, and Reese wasn’t ready to see her battle something like... that.

With the stress-rattled sound, Cristen’s shoulders pulled tightly into her body, seizing as if hearing something that made your stomach coil. Reese swept his hand over his scalp and waved her around the couch.

Cristen padded her feet across the carpet, sinking down beside him on careful feet. There was always a respectful trust between them, especially on Cristen’s end, as he seemed to be one of few people who she valued enough to listen to. (Surprising, I know). He turned down the television, and as Becky’s voice died to a static murmur of white noise in their new home, Reese squeezed her shoulders.

“...How many more of these ‘tests’ are you going to put yourself through? Until…?” Reese asked. His frown showed on his forehead when he rubbed his eyes, “Hold on. I still don’t get this. Would you explain it to me again?”

Cristen stared at a spot on the carpet, fishing against her thigh for something that wasn’t there. When she couldn’t find it, she opted for holding her knee instead, “This is gonna sound stupid, but like, think of this in levels. Gotham is the boss. I entered into the boss-battle too early, so we went back and did all the other levels first, and now I’m returning to take her on again. Or… I just graduated from the police academy, so the Captain’s putting me on the little jobs first.”

Reese didn’t say anything. Cristen kept talking, trying to fill the silence.

”I’m almost there. I just need to… mentally prepare myself. Find a rhythm.” She then laughed, but barely. ”...I know it’s all stupid and dangerous, but you know better than anyone I’m not a normal kid. I gotta put this—” Cristen waved her hands, ”—to good use.”

Fingers bunched, Cristen’s tone was unwavering as the sun’s promise to shine, voice quiet but passionate and fierce. It gave the impression that a dangerous and important promise was being shared. Even if he didn’t like the concept, Cristen’s attitude still endeared Reese.

Sometimes he hates it. The worry bites into him when he hears that tone of hers, especially when concerning the subject of her nighttime activities. But still, as he always will, he loves it because she never talks like that about anything else—it means Cristen loves what she’s doing. And if she is happy, then he is elated… but still worried as hell.

“And it’s not about getting revenge,” Cristen said. Her eyes returned to the television, as a clip of Batman, Robin, and then seconds later, Catwoman appeared on the screen. She nodded to the street outside the window. ”It’s about getting justice for them.”

“For Laureline, and Lance and—and everyone else who was taken from us in the wrong way, or had something taken from them.” Cristen said.

She pointed with great emphasis to the coffee table, which was already decorated with photos. Cristen on the day of her adoption, smiling bright between Reese and a coiled-haired man of similar age, admiring the man’s glasses while they chuckled. Another of Cristen and an Asian police-woman under the metro-line station. And a photo of Laureline, smiling big as if knowing a very sweet secret.

Laureline was with another woman in this photo. She and Cristen had never met positively before, but Cristen knew her as Laureline’s adopted mother Nancy. They’d been stupid, messing around outside a convenience store too early in the morning, and the police had been called for loitering or something—thing was, Laureline got caught. Though that hadn’t turned out to be a huge deal.

“It would be pretty nice, y’know?” Laureline had said, and her voice sounded faded and distance and… boiled with longing. “I mean, I get why you hate the adoption system. You had a reason to leave and they just couldn’t see it. No offense, Crissy, but I’m starting to realize that I just followed you because I wanted a family—and that’s what you are, still. But… still.”

Not like Cristen didn’t find her way back to her. (She always would). But by the time Cristen had, Laureline had been thrown back into the business and adopted right away. Her street story gained sympathy from Nancy, apparently, but none of that really mattered. She still hung out with Cristen after being adopted.

She still died, and that was still Cristen’s fault.

Reese could only smile brokenly at the photos, at his family and Cristen’s previous. He twists the ring around his finger against Cristen’s shoulder, and together they silence, only for a moment.

Then Reese exhaled like nothing was wrong, applying a smile to his face like he did everytime their loved ones were remembered, ”Alright, cadet. I guess it’s about time you move up in the ranks anyway.”

The edges of Cristen’s lips teased upward, ”You’re damn right it is, sir.”

Reese pat Cristen’s shoulder, then pulled something off the coffee table. He pressed a small wad of money in Cristen’s palm, a mischievous twinkle in his eye, like he knew Cristen could see it and that he was teasing the fact he knew something she didn’t. His fingers were warm on her cheek.

"Now, why don’t you start off your last days of summer by getting us some breakfast, kid?”

Cristen’s face was conquered by a grin.

**GOTHAM CITY; DOWNTOWN SHOPPING DISTRICT | 12:38 | CRISTEN YOUNG**

BY THE TIME Cristen reached Solomon Bridge, it had begun to rain. Even if it wasn’t the night before, she still felt at home, like she could walk the streets blind and get to any destination. Everytime a familiar sight came upon the street she walked a little slower as to remember every one of its details. She filed them all away in the special place in her mind reserved for Gotham, filed away the little things she remembered and the new things to note.

The old sign of a new establishment, a crumbling gargoyle looking down at her and welcoming her return, the light hitting the LexCorp building just the right way to temporarily blind her. The familiarity crept up on her in the oddest of ways. She had stared at a gang-sign on the substation wall, swearing up and down that she remembered it, and came to the realization that it was actually a foreign swear with quiet laughter. It felt good to be home.

The day was too late for breakfast—a cause of her late sleeping schedule—and that only meant one suitable place in town; Big Belly Burger.

Specifically, the one near Gotham’s Chinatown, on the corner of Cooke and Burton. After being to one BBB across town and one in Fawcett, Cristen had determined that this one was just better than all the others. As stupid as it is, this place is her own special safe-haven. She remembered going here with Laureline once, and several times with Reese and Lance.

Lance Young was the only person who understood exactly what was whirling through Cristen’s mind. His mom was a cop who’d fallen in the line of duty, and his philosophy in life ever since was simply persevere. He loved science and space so much they could go from burgers to Pluto’s planetary status in minutes, just like he could turn a tickle-fight into a tutoring session on chemistry.

Remembering her father and her father’s face sent a sharp ache through Cristen’s belly, but no matter how hard she tried to get the image out of her head, Lance’s words only filed over it like dialogue in a film.

“You… are the strongest person I know,” he had said, holding her hands with an urgency Cristen missed too much. “So don’t you ever let anyone think otherwise. When they’ve got you down, and they think they’ve won, play possum. Wait. Then you show them that true strength.”

Now, Cristen can only stare at the place in disdain. Or at least whatever remained of her beloved burger joint. There was no longer a symbol of red and yellow emblazoned with a burger on the glass door, nor were there red-and-white checkered floors and a permanent steam of goodness fogging the windows. Instead, above the side of the restaurant in great, blinking lights like bleach to her vision, read the word BATBURGER.

From Cristen’s place across the street, she could see employees in Batman-themed costumes. A poorly-suited Batman tended to the front counter, while a Batgirl delivered a tray of food to a table. If Cristen had brought her lucky Robin symbol, this monstrosity would be traded for whatever they had done to her BBB. The Robin sadly sweeping up some trash inside seemed to agree.

Then the skin on the back of Cristen’s neck tingles, hair rising beneath her hood, dulled enough where she doesn’t turn around. The sensation is so familiar she can sense its every curl and tune. Her hands fist in the pockets of her sweatshirt, and she closes her eyes once the voice greets her. She has to hold down a smile.

“I know,” The accent is pure slum, all dialect and slang straight from Gotham’s underbelly, ”Don’t it suck? They couldn’t have gone with somethin’ like a Taco Bell or a Burger Heaven—hell, a Starbucks!—but no, they went with Batburger, because Bats is all the rave now.”

When Cristen turns around to greet the girl, she’s no longer faced with the girl from Little Italy crammed into that stupid apartment with her and Laureline, but the college graduate with a nice coat and a nicer purse under her arm. She used to go by Roxy, for her protection. But Cristen has known Holly Robinson for a long time running. Holly envelopes her without hesitation, and Cristen delicately squeezes her around the waist.

“Or why not a store we could actually use? Why does Wayne Enterprises not step in and supply a veterinarian or something…?” Cristen agreed, smiling when Holly planted a kiss on her cheek.

She knew that they would eventually cross paths. They were, in a way, sisters. Not in the way that Cristen and Laureline were sisters, but more in the way that they were very good friends. While they had not been through everything together, Cristen came into Holly’s life just as suddenly as Holly would expect, now that she knew Cristen better. They were children of the Narrows—the silent sisterhood was clear.

Holly Robinson was a street-kid, but not the kind who gave ladies back their purses and entered fighting rings. The kind who got roped into child prostitution. Cristen knew the story and the woman who’d gotten Holly out of it, even if she didn’t approve of the way the whole thing went down. That wasn’t Holly’s fault. Regardless, she went from living in a run-down apartment with all the other runaways to living the high-life, and that’s all Cristen needed to hear.

When Holly pulled from their embrace, she cocked her head to the side, lifting her umbrella so Cristen was also beneath it. Cristen shifted so the rain was hitting the back of her neck, “Are you busy right now, babe?”

“Getting lunch for Reese and I,” Cristen jabbed her finger in the direction of the Batburger, flashing it a disdainful look over her shoulder. ”Why? You wanna get something with me?”

Holly shook her head, sending a curtain of her drizzly strawberry-blonde ringlets into her face. Cristen could distinctly see her as the hip star of a classic 80s movie, with her tightly coiled curls and makeup; she looked like young Michelle Pfeiffer after being caught in a rainstorm. Holly held her chin for a moment, then pulled out her phone.

After swiftly typing out a quick message, she clasped both of Cristen’s warm hands and announced, ”Tomorrow night’s the night, Cris!”

“The night for what?” Cristen questioned. The way her skin prickled excited her, like a shot of electrified curiosity entered her body and darted down her strong arms, circulating through her hands and back up to her heart. Holly’s tone was almost a squeal.

Holly leaned in and squeezed Cristen's hands once. Cristen swore that she could feel Holly’s pulse tap-dancing through her gloves.

" _The_ night. The night you’ve been waiting for,” Holly grinned, shoulders brought together in pure excitement. “Selina’s plane just landed; she’s got a special delivery for you.”

 


End file.
